6 Prof. Chas. Morren on the Cultivation q/* Vanilla. 



It was in 1836 that by a peculiar horticultural treatment we 

 had at Liege upon one Vanilla plant fifty-four flowers^ which 

 having been fecundated by me^ produced the same number of 

 pods ; and in 1837 a fresh crop of about a hundred pods was 

 obtained upon another plant by the same methods ; so that 

 now there is not the least doubt of the complete success of 

 this new cultivation. 



§ III. Short Digression on the Introduction of Vanilla into 



domestic use. 



From the works of the illustrious Alexander von Humboldt 

 we learn that the Mexicans were already in the habit of per- 

 fuming their chocolate when the Spaniards discovered this 

 part of America. It seems^ however, by the accounts which 

 I have read of the first travellers in this region, that the Ame- 

 rican chocolate was a detestable beverage to which the Euro- 

 peans afterwards gave an exquisite flavour. Chocolate was 

 brought from Mexico into Europe in 1520, but it appears that 

 vanilla was brought to the continent as a perfume about the 

 year 1510, at the same time as indigo, cochineal, and cacao 

 itself, that is to say, ten years before the arrival of tobacco. 

 Nevertheless, as I have elsewhere said, ' Notice sur la Vanille,^ 

 Bruxelles, in spite of its perfume, so sweet that Salisbury at a 

 later period called the plant Myrohroma, vanilla cannot have 

 acquired a very great popularity about that period ; for Claude 

 d^ Abbeville, whose singular ^ History of the Mission of the 

 Capuchin Fathers in the Island of Maragnan and the neigh- 

 bouring lands,' published in 1614, I have consulted, says no- 

 thing of this plant, although he devotes an especial chapter 

 to the history of the vegetables which are useful or curious, 

 as the pine apple, of fruit trees, as the palm tree, &c. At a 

 much later period it engaged but very slightly the attention 

 of travellers, and I shall quote among others Father Gurailla, 

 w^ho in his ^ Natural, Civil, and Geographical History of the 

 Nations inhabiting the banks of the Orinoko,' mentions the 

 vanilla {Bagnilla) merely as being a sarmentose plant always 

 green and twining itself around trees. 



In 1703, vanilla was better known from the writings of 

 Charles Plumier. At that time its use was diffused over the 



