234! ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 



(excepting in the extreme north), in Anatolia, the south 

 of the Caucasus, and the Persian province of Ghilan.^ 

 Near Trebizond, the botanist Bourgeau saw quite a small 

 forest of them.^ In the mountains of the north-west 

 of India it is " apparently wild," as Sir Joseph Hooker 

 writes in his Flora of British India. No author men- 

 tions it as growing in Siberia, in Mongolia, or in Japan.^ 



There are two varieties wild in Germany, the one 

 with glabrous leaves and ovaries, the other with leaves 

 downy on the under side, and Koch adds that this down 

 varies considerably.^ In France accurate autliors also 

 give two wild varieties, but Avith characters which do 

 not tally exactly with those of the German flora.^ It 

 would be easy to account for this difference it' the wild 

 trees in certain districts spring from cultivated varieties 

 whose seeds have been accidentally dispersed. The 

 question is, therefore, to discover to what degree the 

 species is probably ancient and indigenous in different 

 countries, and, if it is not more ancient in one country 

 than another, how it was gradually extended by the 

 accidental sowing of forms changed by the crossing of 

 varieties and by cultivation. 



The country in which the apple appears to be most 

 indio-enous is the rei^ion lying: between Trebizond and 

 Ghilan. The variety which there grows wild has leaves 

 downy on the under side, short peduncles, and sweet 

 fruit,^ like Mains communis of France, described by 

 Boreau. This indicates that its prehistoric area extended 

 from the Caspian Sea nearly to Europe. 



Piddinoton o-ives in his Index a Sanskrit name for 

 the apple, but Adolphe Pictef^ informs us that this 



* Nyman, Coni^pectus Florce EuropecB, p. 210; Ledebour, Flora Rossica, 

 ii. p. 96; Boissier, Flora Orientalis, ii. p. 656; De-aisue, Nouv. Arch. 

 Mus., X. p. 153. 



* Boissier, ibid. 



^ Maximowicz, Pyi)n. JJssur.; Ee??el, Opit. FZon', etc., on the plants of 

 Hic Ussuri collected bjMaak; Schmidt, Reisen Am'ir. Franchet and 

 Savatier do not Tuention it in their Enum. Jap. Bretschneider quotes 

 a Chinese name which, he says, applies also to other species. 



* Koch, Syn. Fl. Germ., i. p. 261. 



* Boreau, FL du Centre de la France, edit. 3, vol. ii. p. 236. 



* Boissier, uhi supra. ' Oi'i'j- Indo-Eur., i. p. 276. 



