PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS- S3 5 



teresting details about the raising, uses, and habitation of 

 the species as a cultivated tree. He notes that it does 

 not pass the noithern limit beyond which the orange 

 cannot be grown without shelter. This fine evergreen 

 tree does not thrive either in very hot countries, especially 

 where there is much humidity. It likes the neighbour- 

 hood of the sea and rocky places. Its original country, 

 according to Gasparin, is " probably the centre of Africa. 

 Denham and Clapperton found it in Burnou." This 

 proof seems to me insufficient, for in all the Nile Valley 

 and in Abyssinia the carob is not wild nor even culti- 

 vated.-^ R. Brown does not mention it in his account of 

 Denham and Clapperton's journey. Travellers have seen 

 it in the forests of Cyrenaica between the high-lands 

 and the littoral ; but the able botanists who have drawn 

 up the catalogue of the plants of this country are careful 

 to say,^ "perhaps indigenous." Most botanists merely 

 mention the species in the centre and south of the Medi- 

 terranean basin, from Spain and Marocco to Syria and 

 Anatolia, without inquiring closely whether it is indi- 

 genous or cultivated, and without entering upon the 

 question of its true country previous to cultivation. 

 Usually they indicate the carob tree, as " cultivated and 

 subspontaneous, or nearly wild." However, it is stated to 

 be wild in Greece by Heldreich, in Sicily by Gussone and 

 Bianca, in Algeria by Munby ; ^ and these authors have 

 each lived long enough in the country for which each is 

 quoted to form an enlightened opinion. 



Bianca remarks, however, that the carob tree is not 

 always healthy and productive in those restricted localities 

 where it exists in Sicily, in the small adjacent islands, 

 and on the coast of Italy. He puts forward the opinion, 

 moreover, based upon the similarity of the Italian name 

 carruho with the Arabic word, that the species was 



* Sch-weinf urth and Ascherson, AufzaMung, p. 255 ; Richard, Tentamen 



Fl. Abyss. 



* Ascherson, etc., in Rohls, Kufra, 1 voL in 8vo, 1881, p. 519. 



' Heldreich, Nutzpflanzen Griechenlands, p. 73 ; Die PH,anzen der 

 Attischen Ehene, p. 477 ; Gossone, 8yn. Fl. Sic, p. 646 ; Bianca, E Carruho^ 

 in the Oiornale d'Agricoltura Italiana, 1881; Muubj, Catal. PI. in Alg. 

 Spont., p. 13. 



