12 PERIOD IV. 



The great accessions of geographical knowledge 

 made during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were 

 slow to affect horticulture. Ships were then few and 

 small, and the passage from Hispaniola or Calicut to 

 Cadiz or Lisbon occupied weeks or even months. 

 Moreover, the conquests of Spain and Portugal (Goa, 

 the Moluccas, Brazil, the West Indies, Peru, and 

 Mexico) lay mostly within the tropics, and could 

 furnish hardly any plants capable of enduring a 

 European winter. Special pains were, however, taken 

 to bring over some valuable food-plants which were 

 thought likely to thrive in Europe. Before any Euro- 

 pean landed in America the potato had been cultivated 

 by the Indians of Peru, a country which, though lying 

 almost under the line, rises into cool mountain-districts. 

 Potato-tubers were soon introduced to Spain and Italy, 

 and a little later to other parts of Europe ; Raleigh's 

 planting of potatoes on his estate near Cork came a 

 few years later. The edible tomato, which is distin- 

 guished from the wild form by its enlarged fruits, was 

 apparently cultivated in Peru before the first landing 

 of the Spaniards. The unusually high proportion of 

 edible plants among the first importations from America 

 and other distant countries is worthy of remark. Early 

 explorers eagerly sought for valuable food-plants, but 

 the number of such as could be cultivated alive in 

 Europe was very limited, and since the sixteenth 

 century the attention of collectors has been fixed upon 

 ornamental species simply because of the dearth of 

 others. 



European flower-gardens were enriched during the 

 sixteenth century by the following American species : 

 the so-called French and African marigolds (both 

 from Mexico), sunflowers, the arbor-vitae (Thuja 



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