52 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



culture. This chart describes a grain of a golden color, and 

 partly white, — " granis de colore aureo, et partim albo," — under 

 the name of meliga. Crescenzio describes the method of culti- 

 vating this grain, which is very nearly the same as that of culti- 

 vating maize at the present day. The Portuguese writer, Sata 

 Roza de Viterbo, also, asserts that it was known in the thirteenth 

 century. Whatever may be said of its origin, it seems to have 

 been first introduced into Turkey, from whence it made its way 

 to the West. This is shown by the names which have been 

 given to it in Europe, several of them indicating that it came 

 through Turkey. But according to some Spanish authors, it 

 was brought into Spain by the Arabs. A Chinese writer of the 

 middle of the sixteenth century, draws the figure of the maize 

 as known in China, which is said to correspond with some species 

 of maize now known. Some travellers who have visited the 

 Asiatic isles, have inferred that it was cultivated about the 

 equator, in that vicinity, from great antiquity, and that it passed 

 from these isles into China, and thonce to the interior about the 

 Himalaya. John Crawford, who lived for years in the Island of 

 Java, says : " Maize is, next to rice, the most important agri- 

 cultural product among the great tribes of the Indian Arcliipe- 

 lago." Mr. Rifaud asserts that some kernels were found in the 

 sarcophagus of a mummy in Thebes, in 1819. The well known 

 orientalist, D'Herbelot, mentions, a passage of Mirkond, a Per- 

 sian historian, which might lead us to suppose that maize was 

 known to the old world, long before the discovery of the new. 

 Now the question arises, whether the meliga described in the 

 old chart of Incisa alluded to, was identical with the zea mais ? 

 Bonafous says on this point, that the description of the meliga 

 from the East corresponds to maize, but that according to the 

 learned author of the " Flore d'Egypte," in tlie description pub- 

 lished by order of Napoleon, it can equally well be applied to 

 the millet of India, in which the grains pass in some of the 

 varieties from yellow to white. But Cardan says, distinctly, 

 that maize strongl}^ resembles the plant known in Italy asmelica, 

 or sorghum^ which is the meliga of Incisa. So of several otlier 

 authorities, as Matthioli and Georges de Turre. Moreover, 

 Bonafous himself declares that it is evident, to look at it, tliat 

 the meliga is a real maize, and he is, therefore, inclined to 

 believe that it was known in Asia and Europe before the 

 discovery of America. 



