328 MEETING OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 
The Sweet Potato, or tuber-yielding Convolvulus, appears to be a 
native of many parts of the tropical Old and New World. Some have 
alleged that it was first made an object of cultivation by the native 
Americans, but when the South Sea Islands, which had assuredly no 
communication with the American people, were discovered, the sweet 
potato was found to be in cultivation, and known by a native name 
throughout, the word being essentially the same, and a native one, 
varying only in pronunciation, as kumava, humda, and gumala abbrevi- 
ated mala. [Kumara or umara, of the South-Sea Islanders, is identical 
with cumar, the Quichua name for sweet potato in the highlands of 
Ecuador.—Ep.] 
There is every appearance of the culture of the datata having been 
introduced into the islands of the Malay archipelago, and this by the 
Spaniards or Portuguese. In the Molucca Islands it accordingly goes 
under the name of bi kastela, which signifies literally ** the Castilian 
Yam," for the Moluccas had been temporarily under the rule of Spain, 
already in possession of the neighbouring Philippines. The Javanese, 
dropping the generie word, and eliding the sibilant in the word Castila, 
call the plant simply catela. The Javanese give it also the same name 
as the Spaniards, namely, batata or patata. The probability, then, that 
the Spaniards introduced the plant from the neighbouring Philippines, 
where it seems, if we are to trust the evidence of language, to have 
been cultivated by the natives when the Spaniards conquered them. 1 
find the plant accordingly designated by native names in the two lead- 
ing languages of these islands, the Tagala and Bisaya, in the first of 
which it is called gadi, and in the last kamoti,—a word, I may observe, 
adopted in Spanish dictionaries, and defined as the name of “a kind of 
sweet potato or batata.”  [Camote of the Spaniards is derived from 
the Aztec “ camotl,” used by the ancient Mexicans.—Eb.] 
In Upper India the plant is clearly an exotic, and shown to be out 
of its genial climate by the production of poor and small tubers. The 
name given to it is shakarcand, a word half Persian and half Hindi, 
and both of which signify sugar. The Tamil name is the American 
datata, slightly corrupted into vatata. 
The common Potato takes its name from the sweet one, for the latter 
seems to have been known, and even cultivated in the South of Spain 
before the first. Even at present, the name “potato” is given by the 
Anglo-Saxon Americans to the Convolvulus Batatas, while to the common 
