PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 345 



and Asia. I see no indication whatever of ancient exist- 

 ence in Asia. The plant has never been found wild, and 

 it has no name in the modern languages of India or 

 in Sanskrit, 1 It is not mentioned in Chinese works. 

 Anglo-Indians call it French bean, 2 like the common 

 haricot, which shows how modern is its cultivation. 



It is cultivated in nearly all tropical Africa. How- 

 ever, Schweinfurth and Ascherson 3 do not mention it 

 for Abyssinia, Nubia, or Egypt. Oliver 4 quotes a number 

 of specimens found in Guinea and the interior of Africa, 

 without saying whether they were wild or cultivated. 

 If we suppose the species of African origin or of very early 

 introduction, it would have spread to Egypt and thence 

 to India. 



The facts are quite different for South America. 

 Bentham mentions wild specimens from the Amazon 

 basin and Central Brazil. They belong especially to the 

 large variety (macrocarpus), which abounds also in the 

 Peruvian tombs of Ancon, according to Wittmack. 5 It is 

 evidently a Brazilian species, diffused by cultivation, and 

 perhaps long since naturalized here and there in tropical 

 America. I am inclined to believe it was introduced into 

 Guinea by the slave trade, and that it spread thence 

 into the interior and the coast of Mozambique. 



Moth, or Aconite-leaved Kidney Bean Phaseolus 

 aconitifolius, Willdenow. 



An annual species grown in India as fodder, and of 

 which the seeds are eatable, though but little valued. 

 The Hindustani name is mout, among the Sikhs moth. It 

 is somewhat like Ph. trilobus, which is cultivated for the 

 seed. Ph. aconitifolius is wild in British India from 

 Ceylon to the Himalayas. 6 The absence of a Sanskrit 

 name, and of different names in modern Indian languages, 

 points to a recent cultivation. 



Three-lobed Kidney Bean Phaseolus trilobus, Will- 

 denow. 



1 Roxburgh, Piddington, etc. 2 Royle, III. Himalaya, p. 190. 



8 Aufdzhlung, etc., p. 257. 4 Oliver, Fl. of Trop. Afr., p. 192. 



5 Wittmack, Sitz. Bot. Vereins Branden., Dec. 19, 1879. 



6 Roxburgh, Fl. Ind. edit. 1832, vol. iii. p. 299 ; Aitchison, Gatal. oj 

 Punjab, p. 48; Sir J. Hooker, Fl. of Brit. Ind., ii. p. 202. 



