PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 287 



has been introduced into gardens in Mauritius, the Malay 

 Archipelago, and India, from the time of Rheede and 

 Rumphius, but no one disputes its American origin. 

 Several botanists have seen it wild in the forests of the 

 Isthmus of Panama, of Campeachy, 1 of Venezuela, 2 and 

 perhaps of Trinidad. 3 In Jamaica, in the time of Sloane, 

 it existed only in gardens. 4 It is very doubtful that 

 it is wild in the other West India Islands, although 

 perhaps the seeds, scattered here and there, may have 

 naturalized it to a certain degree. Tussac says that the 

 young plants are not easy to rear in the plantations. 



Aubergine Solanum melongena, Linnaeus ; Solanum 

 esculentum, Dunal. 



The aubergine has a Sanskrit name, vartta, and several 

 names, which Piddington in his Index considers as both 

 Sanskrit and Bengali, such as bong, bartakon, mahoti, 

 hingoli. Wallich, in his edition of Roxburgh's Indian 

 Flora, gives vartta, varttakou, varttaka bunguna, whence 

 the Hindustani bungan. Hence it cannot be doubted 

 that the species has been known in India from a very 

 remote epoch. Rumphius had seen it in gardens in the 

 Sunda Islands, and Loureiro in those of Cochin-China. 

 Thunberg does not mention it in Japan, though several 

 varieties are now cultivated in that country. The Greeks 

 and Romans did not know the species, and no botanist 

 mentions it in Europe before the beginning of the seven- 

 teenth century, 5 but its cultivation must have spread 

 towards Africa before the Middle Ages. The Arab phy- 

 sician, Ebn Baithar, 6 who wrote in the thirteenth century, 

 speaks of it, arid he quotes Rhasis, who lived in the 

 ninth century. Rauwolf 7 had seen the plant in the 

 gardens of Aleppo at the end of the sixteenth century. 

 It was called melanzana and bedengiam. This Arabic 



1 Dampier and Lussan, in Sloane's Jamaica, ii. p. 172; Seemann, 

 Botany of the Herald., p. 166. 



2 Jacquin, Amer. t ip. 59; Humboldt and Bonplanrl, Nova Genera, iii. 

 p. 239. 



3 Grisebach, Flora, of Brit. W. Ind., p. 399. * Sloane, uU supra. 



5 Dunal, Hist, des Solanum, p. 209. 



6 Ebn BaitLar, Germ, trans., i. p. 116. 



7 Rauwolf, Flora Orient., ed. Groningue, p. 26. 



