412 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 



cultivated in Egypt, but it is not at all evident tliat tlie 

 Arachis is the plant to which Theophrastus alludes in 

 the quoted passage. If it had been formerly cultivated 

 in Egypt it Avould probably still exist in that country, 

 whereas it does not occur in Forskal's catalogue nor in 

 Delile's more extended flora. There is nothing very 

 unlikety/ continues Brown, 'in the hypothesis that the 

 Arachis is indigenous both in Africa and America; but 

 if it is considered as existing originally in one of these 

 continents only, it is more probable that it was brought 

 from China through India to Africa, than that it took 

 the contrary direction.' My father in 1825, in the Pro- 

 dvortiiis (ii. p. 474), returned to Linnaeus' opinion, and 

 admitted without hesitation the American origin. Let 

 us reconsider the question" (I said in 1855) "with the 

 aid of the discoveries of modern science. 



'AracMs Icypogcaa was the only species of this singular 

 genus known. Six other species, all Brazilian, have 

 since been discovered.^ Thus, appl3'ing the rule of pro- 

 bability of which Browm first made great use, we incline 

 a 2>^'iori to the idea of an American origin. We must 

 remember that MarcG^raf ^ and Piso ^ describe and fioure 

 the plant as used in Brazil, under the name "manduhi, 

 which seems to be indigenous. They quote Monardes, a 

 w^'iter of the end of the sixteenth centurv, as havinor 

 indicated it in Peru under a different name, anchic. 

 Joseph Acosta ^ merely mentions an American name, 

 onani, and speaks of it wdth other species which are not 

 of foreim orio-in in America. The Arachis was not 

 ancient in Guiana, in the West Indies, and in Mexico. 

 Aublet ^ mentions it as a cultivated plant, not in Guiana, 

 but in the Isle of France. Hernandez does not speak of 

 it. Sloane^ had seen it only in a garden, grown from 

 seeds brought from Guinea. He says that the slave- 

 dealers feed the negroes with it on their passage from 



* Bentham, in Trayis. Linn. Soc, xviii. p. 159; Walpers, Repertojiiayi, 

 i. p. 727. 



* Marcgiaf and Piso, Brasil., p. 37, edit. 1648. 

 3 Ibid., edit. 1658, p. 256. 



* Acosta, Hist. Nat. T7id., French, trans., 1598, p. 165. 



* Aublet, PL Guyauy p. 705. * Sloane, Jamaica, p. 184. 



