PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 385 



In Egypt the cultivation of this species is perhaps 

 not very ancient. The monuments of antiquity bear no 

 trace of it. Graeco-Roman authors who knew the country 

 did not speak of it, nor later Prosper Alpin, Forskal, and 

 Delile. We must refer to a modern work, that of 

 Schweinfurth and Ascherson, to find mention of the 

 species, and I cannot even disco v^er an Arab name.^ 

 Thus botany, history, and philology point to an Indian 

 origin. The flora of British India, in which the Graminse 

 have not yet appeared, wih perhaps tell us the plant 

 has been found wild in recent explorations. 



A nearly allied species is grown in Abyssinia, ^/ei^^sme 

 Tocussa, Fresenius,^ a plant very little known, which is 

 perhaps a native of Africa. 



Rice — Oryza sativa, Linnaeus. 



In the ceremony instituted by the Chinese Emperor 

 Chin-nong, 2800 years B.C., rice plays the principal part. 

 The reigning emperor must himself sow it, whereas the 

 four other species are or may be sown by the princes of 

 his family^ The five species are considered by the 

 Chinese as indigenous, and it must be admitted that this 

 is probably the case with rice, which is in general use, 

 and has been so for a long time, in a country intersected 

 by canals and rivers, and hence peculiarly favourable 

 to aquatic plants. Botanists have not sufficiently studied 

 Chinese plants for us to know whether rice is often found 

 outside cultivated ground ; but Loureiro * had seen it in 

 marshes in Cochin- China. 



Rumphius and modern writers upon the Malay 

 Archipelago give it only as a cultivated plant. The 

 multitude of names and varieties points to a very ancient 

 cultivation. In British India it dates at least from the 

 Aryan invasion, for rice has Sanskrit names, vrihi, 



' Several synonyms and the Arabic name in Linnaeus, Delile, etc., 

 apply to Dactyloctenium oegyptiaciun, Willdenow, or Eleusine oegyptiaca 

 of some authors, which is not cultivated. 



2 Fresenius, Gatal. Sent. Rorti. Franco/., 1834, Beiir. z. Fl. Abyss., 

 p. 141. 



• Stanislas Julien, in Loiseleur, Consid. sur les C^reales, part i. p. 29 ; 

 Bretschneider, Study and Value of Chinese Botanical Works, pp. 8 and Si 



* Loureiro, Fl. Cochin., L p. 2t>7. 



