PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 343 



harenso for the common pea. I rejected as improbable 

 the notion that the name of a vegetable could come from 

 the dish called haricot or laricot of mutton, as suggested 

 by an English author, and criticized Bescherelle, who 

 derived the word from Keltic, while the Breton words are 

 totally different, and signify small bean {fa-munno) or 

 kind of pea (pis-raon). Lettre, in his dictionary, also seeks 

 the etymology of the word. Without any acquaintance 

 with my article, he inclines to the theory that haricot, the 

 plant, comes from the ragout, seeing that the latter is 

 older in the language, and that a certain resemblance 

 may be traced between the haricot bean and the morsels 

 of meat in the ragout, or else that this bean was suitable 

 to the making of the dish. It is certain that this 

 vegetable was called in French faseole or fazeole, from the 

 Latin name, until nearly the end of the seventeenth 

 century ; but chance has led me to discover the real 

 origin of the word haricot. An Italian name, araco, 

 found in Durante and Matthioli, in Latin Aracus niger} 

 was given to a leg-uminous plant which modern botanists 

 attribute to Lathyrus ochrus. It is not surprising that 

 an Italian seventeenth-century name should be trans- 

 ported by French cultivators of the following century to 

 another leguminous plant, and that ara should have been 

 ori. It is the sort of mistake which is common now. 

 Besides, aracos or arachos has been attributed by com- 

 mentators to several Leguminosce of the genera Lathyrus, 

 Vioia, etc. Durante gives the Greek arachos as the 

 synonjnm for his araco, whereby we see the etymology. 

 Pere Feuillee ^ wrote in French aricot; before him Toume- 

 fort spelt it haricot, in the belief, perhaps, that the 

 Greek word was written with an aspirate, which is not 

 tlie case, at least in the best authors. 



I may sum up as follows : — (1) PJmseolus vulgaris has 

 not been long cultivated in India, the south-west of Asia, 

 and Egypt ; (2) it is not certain that it was known in 

 Europe before the discovery of America; (3) at this epoch 



' Durante, Herbario Nuovo^ 1585, p. 39 ; Matthioli ed Valgris, p. 322 ; 

 Taigioni, Dizion. Bot. Ital., i. p. 13. 

 1 ' Feuillee, Hist, des Plan. Medic, du Perou, etc., in 4to, 1725, p. 54. 



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