PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 333 



Africa. Bentham, who has made a careful study of the 

 leguminous plants, believed in 1861 in the African origin ; 

 in 1865 he inclined rather to Asia. 1 The problem is, 

 therefore, an interesting one. There is no question of an 

 American origin. The cajan was introduced into the 

 West Indies from the coast of Africa by the slave trade, 

 as the common names quoted above show, 2 and the 

 unanimous opinion of authors or American floras. It 

 has also been taken to Brazil, Guiana, and into all the 

 warm parts of the American continent. 



The facility with which the species is naturalized 

 would alone prevent attaching great importance to the 

 statements of collectors, who have found it more or less 

 wild in Asia or in Africa; and besides, these assertions are 

 not precise, but are usually doubtful. Most writers on 

 the flora of continental India have only seen the plant 

 cultivated, 3 and none, to my knowledge, affirms that it 

 exists wild. For the island of Ceylon Thwaites says, 4 

 " It is said not to be really wild, and the country names 

 seem to confirm this." Sir Joseph Hooker, in his Flora 

 of British India, says, "Wild (?) and cultivated to the 

 height of six thousand feet in the Himalayas." Loureiro 5 

 gives it as cultivated and non-cultivated in China and 

 Cochin-China. Chinese authors do not appear to have 

 spoken of it, for the species is not named by Bretschneider 

 in his work On the Study, etc. In the Sunda Isles it 

 is mentioned as cultivated, and that rarely, at Amboyna 

 at the end of the eighteenth century, according to Rum- 

 phius. 6 Forster had not seen it in the Pacific Isles at the 

 time of Cook's voyages, but Seemann says that it has 

 been recently introduced by missionaries into the Fiji 

 Isles. 7 All this argues no very ancient extension of cul- 

 tivation to the east and south of the continent of Asia. 

 Besides the quotation from Loureiro, I find the species 



1 Bentham, Flora Hongkong ensis, p. 89 ; Flora BrasiL, vol. xv. p. 199; 

 Bentham and Hooker, i. p. 541. 



Tussac, Flore des Antilles ; Jacquin, Obs., p. 1, 



Rheede, Roxburgh, Kurz, Burm. FL, etc. 



Thwaites, Enum, PL Ceylan. * Loureiro, FL Cochin., p. 565. 



Rumphius, Amb., vol. v. t. 135. 



Seemann, FL Vitiensisj p. 74. 



