300 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 



the branches of a tree thirty to fifty feet high.^ The 

 common name is derived froia the Indian names ^'aca, or 

 tsjaka. 



The species has long been cultivated in southern 

 A-sia, from the Punjab to China, from the Himalayas to 

 the Moluccas. It has not spread into the small islands 

 more to the east, such as Otahiti, which leads us to sup- 

 pose it has not been so long in the archipelago as upon 

 the continent. In the north-west of India, also, its 

 cultivation does not perhaps date from a very remote 

 epoch, for the existence of a Sanskrit name is not abso- 

 lutely certain. Roxburgh mentions one, punusa, but 

 Piddington does not admit it into his Index. The Per- 

 sians and the Arabs do not seem to have known the 

 species. Its enormous fruit must, however, have struck 

 them if the species had been cultivated near their fron- 

 tiers. Dr. Bretschneider does not speak of any Arto- 

 carpus in his work on the plants known to the ancient 

 Chinese, whence it may be inferred that towards China, 

 as in other directions, the jack-fiuit was not diffused at 

 a very early epoch. The first statement as to its exist- 

 ence in a wild state is given by Rheede in ambiguous 

 terms : " This tree grows everywhere in Malabar and 

 throughout India." He perhaps confounded the planted 

 tree with the wild one. After him, however, Wight 

 found the species several times in the Indian Peninsula, 

 notably in the Western Ghauts, with every appearance 

 of a wild and indigenous tree. It has been extensively 

 planted in Ceylon ; but Thwaites, the best authority for 

 the flora of this island, does not recognize it as wild. 

 Neither is it wild in the archipelago to the south of 

 India, according to the general opinion. Lastly, Brandis 

 found it growing in the forests of the district of Attaran, 

 in Burmah, but, he adds, always in the neighbourhood of 

 abandoned settlements. Kurz did not find it wild in 

 Biitish Bui mail. ^ 



' See Tussac's plates, Flore des Antilles, pi. 4; and Hooker, Bot. Mag., 

 t. 2833, 2831.. 



Rheede, Malnhar, iii. p. 18 ; Wi,<rlit, Ico}ie>t, ii. No. 678 ; Brandis, 

 Fm-est Flora of India, p. 426 ; Kurz, Forest Flora of Brit. Burmah, p. 432. 



