312 REVIEWS. 



many years the standard work upon the subject, and to 

 undergo revision in successive editions ; and we are sure that 

 the excellent author will welcome eveiy presentation of dis- 

 cussion which may chance to throw any new light upon the 

 sources or the aboriginal cultivation of certain plants which 

 the Old World has drawn from the New. 



The first part of the volume, of only 22 pages, is mainly 

 occupied with a consideration of the means employed for the 

 determination of the sources whence the various cultivated 

 plants have been derived. The botanist enquires where a 

 given cultivated plant grows spontaneously, or what was its 

 wild original ; and he has to judge, as well as he can, where 

 it is truly indigenous or where a reversion from a cultivated 

 to a wild condition. This, as respects weeds and the like, is 

 a difficult matter, even in a newly settled country like North 

 America, much more so in the Old World ; but as respects 

 the plants of agriculture, the case is usually simpler. The 

 botanists resident in a country are not likely to be far misled 

 by the occurrence of wilderings ; but, in the case of travel- 

 ers and collectors, perhaps too much has been made, even 

 in this volume, of plants only once met with growing spon- 

 taneously, and inferred to be indigenous. Plentifulness is 

 of no account, else the Century plant and Opuntia would be 

 thought indigenous to the Mediterranean region, the Ox-eye 

 Daisy to the United States, and certainly the Cardoon to the 

 Pampas, where there is now probably more of it than any- 

 where in the Old World. Archaeology and palaeontology 

 are often helpful, as by the identification of fruits and seeds 

 in ancient Egyptian tombs, or of paintings upon their walls, 

 or of fragments in ancient bricks ; or the debris of lake- 

 dwellings rescued from lacustrine deposits, as in Switzer- 



Rome, 1G51 ; " Rariorum Stirpium Historia " by L'Ecluse (Clusius), in 

 the first edition, Antwerp, 1576 ; his " Exotica," including his translations 

 of Monardes and Acosta, Antwerp, 1605, with his "Curse Posteriores " 

 (posthumous), 1611. — J. H. T. 



II va sans dire — yet should explicitly be said — that all the historical 

 and philological lore, which gives this article its value, is contributed 

 by my associate. — A. G. 



