STURTEV ant's NOTES ON EDIBLE PLANTS 54I 



S. maglia Schlecht. 



Chile. This is a wild potato of Chile called maglia by the natives. The tubers are 

 very small and of a slightly bitter taste.' 



S. melongena Linn, eggplant, jew's apple, mad apple. 



Old World tropics. The eggplant seems not to have been known in Europe in the 

 time of the ancients. The Arab physician, Ebn Baithar, who wrote in the thirteenth 

 century, speaks of it and cites Rhases, who lived in the ninth centiu-y.'' Albertus Magnus,' 

 who lived in Europe in the thirteenth century, mentions it. Ibn-al-awam, a Moorish 

 Spaniard of the twelfth century, describes four species, and six are noted in the Nabathaean 

 agrictUture.'' According to Jessen,* Avicenna, who flourished about A. D. 595, knew it, 

 and called it badingan. Bretschneider * says the eggplant can be identified in the Ts'i 

 ntin yao shu, a Chinese work on agriculture of the fifth century, and is described in later 

 writings of 1590, 1640, and 1742. Acosta ' mentions, as among the vegetables carried 

 from Spain to America, the " berengenas, or apples of Love;" and Piso,' 1658, figures the 

 eggplant among Brazilian plants, under the name of belingela. 



The eggplants first known in Europe appear to belong to the class we now grow for 

 ornament, the fruit resembling an egg. They were of various colors. Fuchsius, 1542, 

 mentions the purple and the yellow; Tragus, 1552, who says they have recently reached 

 Germany from Naples, names the same colors; Lyte's Dodoens, 1586, names two kinds, 

 one purple and the other pale or whitish. In 1587, Dalechamp figures three kinds, the 

 one long, another obscurely pear-shaped and the third rounded; he mentions the colors 

 purple, yellow and ash-colored; Gerarde, 1597, says white, yellow or brown; Dodonaeus, 

 1616, mentions the oblong and rbund, white and purple; Marcgravius, 1648, describes 

 a rotmd and yellow fruit; J. Bauhin, 1651, names various sorts, the long, the deep and 

 the round, yellow, purple and whitish. Bontius, 1658, describes the wild plant of Java 

 as oblong and round, or spherical, the color yellow; the cultivated sorts purple or white. 

 Rauwolf particularly describes these plants at Aleppo, 1574, as ash-colored, yellow and 

 purple. 



At present, the purple eggplant is almost the only color grown in our kitchen gardens 

 but there are many sorts grown in other regions. The purple and the white ornamental 

 are mentioned for American gardens in 1806; as also in England, 1807; in France, 1824. 

 In the Mauritius, Bojer' names three varieties of purple and white colors. In India, 

 Carey '" says, there are several varieties in constant ciiltivation by the natives, such as 



' DeCandolle, A. Geog. Bot. 2:812. 1855. 

 De CandoUe, A. Orig. Pis. Cult. 287. 1885. 

 Albertus Magnus Veg. Jessen Ed. 204. 1867. 



* Ibn-al-awam Livre d'Agr. 2: pt. i, pp. 236-239. i856. 

 'Albertus Magaus Feg. Jessen Ed. 204. 1867. 



Bretschneider, E. Bot. Sin. 5g. 1882. 



'Acosta Nat. Mor. Hist. Ind. 1:265. 1880. Hakl. Soc. Ed. 



Piso De Ind. 210. 1658. 



' Bojer, W. Hort. Maurit. 240. 1837. 



" Roxburgh, W. Hort. Beng. 16. 1814. 



