PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 279 



layas ; ^ it often becomes naturalized, as for instance, in 

 the centre of France.^ 



This shrub was unknown in Greece and Italy, for it 

 is proper to colder countries. From the variety of the 

 names in all the languages, even in those anterior to the 

 Aryans, of the north of Europe, it is clear that this fruit 

 was very early sought after, and its cultivation was pro- 

 bably begun before the Middle Ages. J. Bauhin^ says it 

 was planted in gardens in France and Italy, but most 

 sixteenth-century authors do not mention it. In the 

 Histoire de la Vie Privee des Frangais, by Le Grand 

 d'Aussy, published in 1872, vol. i. p. 232, the following 

 curious passage occurs : " The black currant has been 

 cultivated hardly forty years, and it owes its reputa- 

 tion to a pamphlet entitled Culture du Cassis, in which 

 the author attributed to this shrub all the virtues it is 

 possible to imagine." Further on (vol. iii. p. 80), the 

 author mentions the frequent use, since the publication of 

 the pamphlet in question, of a liqueur made from the 

 black currant. Bosc, who is always accurate in his articles 

 in the Dictionnaire d' Agriculture, mentions this fashion 

 under the head Currant, but he is careful to add, " It 

 has been very long in cultivation for its fruit, which has 

 a peculiar odour agreeable to some, disagreeable to others, 

 and which is held to be stomachic and diuretic." It is 

 also used in the manufacture of the liqueurs known as 

 ratafia de Cassis.* 



Olive — Olea Europea, Linnaeus. 



The wild olive, called in botanical books the variety 



* Ledebour, Fl. Ross., p. 200 ; Maximowicz, PrimiticB Fl. Amur., p. 

 119 ; Clarke, in Hooker, FL Brit, hid., ii. p. 411. 



* Boreau, Flore dii Centre de la France, edit. 3, p. 2G2. 

 ^ Bauhin, Hist. Plant., ii. p. 99. 



* This name Cassis is curious. Littre says tbat it seems to have been 

 introduced late into the language, and that he does not know its origin. 

 I have not met with it in botanical works eai'lier than the middle of the 

 seventeenth century. My manuscript collection of common names, among 

 more than forty names for this species in different languages or dialects 

 has not one which resembles it. Buchoz, in his Dictionnnire desPlantes, 

 1770, i. p. 289, calls the plant the Cassis or Cassetier des Poifevins. The 

 old French name was Poivrier or groseillier noir. Larousse's dictionary 

 says that good liqueurs were made at Cassis in Provence. Can this be 

 the origin of the name ? 



