PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 425 



it, and it is retained in modern Greek, 1 while the Arabs 

 have a totally different name, kerua, kerroa, charua* 



Roxburgh and Piddington quote a Sanskrit name, 

 eranda, erunda, which has left descendants in the modern 

 languages of India. Botanists do not say from what 

 epoch of Sanskrit this name dates ; as the species belongs 

 to hot climates, the Aryans cannot have known it before 

 their arrival in India, that is at a less ancient epoch than 

 the Egyptian monuments. 



The extreme rapidity of the growth of the castor-oil 

 plant has suggested different names in Asiatic language, 

 and that of Wunderbaum in German. The same circum- 

 stance, and the analogy with the Egyptian name kiki, 

 have caused it to be supposed that the kikajon of the 

 Old Testament, 3 the growth, it is said, of a single night, 

 was this plant. 



I pass a number of common names more or less 

 absurd, as palma Christi, girasole, in some parts of 

 Italy, etc., but it is worth while to note the origin of the 

 name castor oil, as a proof of the English habit of accept- 

 ing names without examination, and sometimes of dis- 

 torting them. It appears that in the last century this 

 plant was largely cultivated in Jamaica, where it was 

 once called agno casto by the Portuguese and the 

 Spaniards, being confounded with Vitex agnus castus, a 

 totally different plant. From casto the English planters 

 and London traders made castor* 



Walnut Juglans regia, Linnseus. 



Some years ago the walnut tree was known to be 

 wild in Armenia, in the district to the south of the 

 Caucasus and of the Caspian Sea, in the mountains of 

 the north and north-east of India, and in Burmah. 5 



* Theophrastus, Hist., lib. i. cap. 19 ; Dioscorides, lib. iv. cap. 171 j 

 Fraas, Syn. Fl. Class., p. 92. 



2 Nemnich, Polyglott. Lexicon ; Forskal, Fl. JEgypt., p. 75. 



3 Jonah iv. 6. Pickering, Chron. Hist. Plants, p. 225, writes kyJcwyn. 



* Fliickiger and Hanbury, Pharmacographia, p. 511. 



5 A. de Candolle, Prodr., xvi. part 2, p. 136; Tchihatcheff, Asie 

 Mineure, i. p. 172 ; Ledebour, FL. Ross., i. p. 507 ; Roxburgh, Fl. Ind., iii. 

 p. 630; Boissier, Fl. Orient., iv. p. 1160; Brandis, Forest Flora of N.W. 

 India, p. 498 ; Kurz, Forest Flora of Brit. Burmah, p. 390. 



