156 OKIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 



are sprung from fragments of cane left by the natives, 

 wlio seldom travel without a piece of cane in the hand." 

 In 18G1, Bentham, who had access to the rich herbarium 

 of Kew", says, in his Flora of Hovf/Jcoiig, " We have no 

 authentic and certain proof of a locality where the 

 common sugar-cane is wild." 



I do not know, however, Avhy Ritter and every one 

 else has neglected an assertion of Loureiro, in his Flora 

 of Cochin-China} " Habitat, et colitur abundantissime 

 in omnibus provinciis regni Cochin-Chinensis : siraul in 

 aliquibus imperii sinensis, sed minori copia." The word 

 habitat, separated by a comma from the rest, is a distinct 

 assertion. Loureiro could not haf e been mistaken aboiit 

 the Saccharmn officinariim, which he saw cultivated all 

 about him, and of which he enumerates the principal 

 varieties. He must have seen plants wild, at least in 

 appearance. They may have spread from some neigh- 

 bouring plantation, but I know nothing which makes it 

 unlikely that the plant should be indigenous in this warm 

 moist district of the continent of Asia. 



Forskal ^ mentions the species as wild in the moun- 

 tains of Arabia, under a name which he believes to be 

 Indian. If it came from Arabia, it would have spread 

 mto Egypt long ago, and the Hebrews would have 

 known it. 



Roxburgh had received in the botanical gardens of 

 Calcutta in 171)6, and had introduced into the planta- 

 tions in Bengal, a Saccharum- to which he gave the name 

 of S. sinense, and of which he published an illustration 

 in his great work Plantoi Coromandeliance, voL iii. 

 pi. 232. It is perhaps only a form of S. ofUcinarum., 

 and moreover, as it is only known in a cultivated state, 

 it tells nothing about the primitive country either of 

 this or of any other variety. 



A few botanists have asserted that the sugar-cane 

 flowers more often in Asia than in America or Africa, 

 and even that it produces seed ^ on the banks of the 



Loureiro, Cochin-Ch., edit. 2, vol. i. p. 66. 



* Foi-rikal, Fl. JErjypto-Aruhica, p. 103. 



' M:i(;t'a(lyen, On the Botanical Characterf: of the Si'.rtar-Cane, in 

 Iloiikei's Bot. Miscell., i. p. 101 ; Maycock, Fl. Burhad., p. 50. 



I 



