298 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 



words, arahoymiaze and achormaze, green figs , tahare- 

 menen and teh<ihunemen, dried figs. Webb and Ber- 

 thelot,^ who quote these names, and who admit the 

 common origin of the Guanchos and Berbers, would have 

 noted with pleasure the existence among the Touaregs, 

 a Berber people, of the word tahart, fig tree,^ and in the 

 French-Berber dictionary, published since their time, 

 the names tabeksist, green fig, and tagrourt, fig tree. 

 These old names, of more ancient and local origin than 

 Arabic, bear witness to a very ancient habitation in the 

 north of Africa as far as the Canaries. 



The result of our inquiry shows, then, that the 

 prehistoric area of the fig tree covered the middle and 

 southern part of the Mediterranean basin from Syria to 

 the Canaries. 



We may doubt the antiquity of the fig in the south 

 of France, but a curious fact deserves mention. Plan- 

 chon found in the quaternary tufa of Montpellier, and 

 de Saporta^ in those of Aygalades near Marseilles, 

 and in the quaternary strata of La Celle near Paris, 

 leaves and even fruit of the wild Ficus carica, with 

 teeth of Elephas priviigenius, and leaves of plants of 

 which some no longer exist, and others, like Laurus 

 canariensis, have survived in the Canaries. So that 

 the fig tree perhaps existed in its modern form in this 

 remote epoch. It is possible that it perished in the 

 south of France, as it certainly did at Paris, and re- 

 appeared later in a wild state in the southern region. 

 Perhaps the fig trees which Webb and Berthelot had seen 

 as old plants in the wildest part of the Canaries were 

 descended from those which existed in the fourth epoch. 



Bread-Fruit— J. r^oca?'pus incisa, Linnaeus. 



The bread-fruit tree was cultivated in all the islands 

 of the Asiatic Archipelago, and of the great oceans near 



* Webb and Berthelot, Hist. Nat. des Canaries Ethnogr., p. 186; 

 Phytogr.y iii. p. 257. 



* Duveyrier, Les Touaregs dAi Nord., p. 193. 



' Planchon, Etude sur les tufs de Montpellier, p. 63 ; de Saporta, 



Laflore des tufs quaternaires en Provence, in Co^vptes rendus de la Z2e 

 Session du Congres Scientifique delh-ance; Bull. Soc. Geolog., 167 3-7 4^ 

 p. 442. 



