568 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 



edible potato has, however, since his researches, been found wild in the neighbourhood 

 of Valparaiso, and Mr. Darwin met with it on the islands of the Chonos Archipelago, off 

 the coast of Chili. " The tallest plant," he remarks, " was four feet in height. The 

 tubers were generally small, but I found one, of an oval shape, two inches in diameter ; 

 they resembled in every respect, and had the same smell as English potatoes ; but when 

 boiled they shrunk much, and were watery and insipid, but without any bitter taste. 

 They are undoubtedly here indigenous ; they grow as far south, according to Mr. Low, 

 as lat. 50, and are called Aquinas by the wild Indians of that part ; the Chilotan 

 Indians have a different name for them. Professor Henslow, who has examined the 

 dried specimens which I brought home, says that they are the same with those described 

 by Mr. Sabine from Valparaiso, but that they form a variety which by some botanists 

 has been considered as specifically distinct. It is remarkable that the same plant should 

 be found on the sterile mountains of central Chili, where a drop of rain does not fall for 

 more than six months, and within the damp forests of these southern islands." The 

 vine, Vitis vinifera, now naturalised in Europe, does not belong to it, but occurs in a 

 wild state on the coasts of the Caspian Sea, in Armenia, and in Caramania. The Greeks 

 received it from Asia, the Romans from the Greeks, who planted it upon the banks of 

 the Rhine, and introduced it into England. Previous to the Roman Conquest, it is 

 probable that the native Britons possessed no other fruits than the crab, the sloe, the 

 hazel-nut, and the acorn ; but the vegetable productions with which that people were 

 enriched by their Asiatic conquests, gradually found their way into Western and Northern 

 Europe, with the extension of the Roman Empire. 



The plains of Spain and the south of France received the olive from Tuscany, to 

 which it came from Greece, where it grows spontaneously, covering the beautiful plain of 

 Athens as seen from Mount Hymettus, but its parent spot is farther eastward. Accord- 

 ing to Sickler, a laborious writer on the history of cultivated vegetables, the Romans 

 derived the fig from Syria, the orange from Media, the peach from Persia, the apricot 

 from Epirus, the pomegranate from Africa, the plum, the cherry, the apple, and the pear 

 from Armenia ; but Epirus received the apricot from Persia, where it bears the figurative 

 name of " the seed of the sun ;" and probably it came thither from a southern region. A 

 cherry-tree laden with fruit adorned the triumph of Lucullus, who brought it to Rome as 

 a memorial of his triumph over Mithridates, in whose province of Pontus he had found 

 the tree ; and Pliny states, that " in less than one hundred and twenty years afterwards, 

 other lands had cherries, even as far as Britain beyond the ocean." There is, however, 

 a species of wild cherry, supposed to be indigenous to France and other parts of Europe. 

 In all probability, most of our common fruits are standing memorials of Roman domi- 

 nation in the island. In like manner, the mad enterprise of the crusades contributed to 

 the transport westward of the eastern vegetable treasures, the monks and ecclesiastics 

 being diligent patrons of horticulture in the middle ages. Thus a variety of the plum, 

 the damson, or damascene, as its name imports, was brought from Damascus during the 

 crusades. The damask rose came likewise from the same place, along with the narrow- 

 ' leaved elm from the Holy Land. The conquests of the caliphs also were attended with 

 the same result, the lemon migrating after them to the foot of the Pyrenees, though 

 originally confined to India beyond the Ganges, where it now grows naturally. Culture 

 has exerted a marked influence upon many of these plants, for which it is impossible to 

 account, changing to some extent the form of their leaves, the habits of the trees, and 

 the qualities of their fruits. The cultivated peach becomes one of the most delicious of 

 fruits, but in its wild state in Medina it is poisonous, so that the Persians are said to j 

 have sent it into Egypt with the design of poisoning the inhabitants. There is a species i 

 of apricot in Barbary, called Matza Franca, or the killer of Christians, which becomes j 



