ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 327 



along witli two other nearly related species. Moreover, the 

 following evidence tends to show that its introduction, if in- 

 troduced by human agency, took place before the landing of 

 Columbus. 



On their first sight of the New World, the Spaniards were 

 much impressed by the strangeness of all forms of animal and 

 vegetable life : " all the trees are as unlike ours, as day is to 

 night" — wrote Columbus, Oct. 17th, 1492, six days after 

 landing at San Salvador : " and so are the fruits, and so the 

 plants, and the stones, and all things " (Navarrete, i. 183). 

 On the 28th, on the north shore of Cuba, he saw — apparently 

 for the first time — a familiar plant : " hallo verdohagas 

 muchas y bledos," — he found much "purslane" and '^ble- 

 tum" (id., 192). It seems hardly possible that the Admiral 

 and his companions could mistake a strange plant for a salad 

 herb so well known as " verdolagas " to Spanish eyes and 

 palates. Again, Oviedo, writing about 1526, in a list of 

 " plants in the island of Hispaniola which are like those of 

 Spain, and which were before the Christians came to these 

 parts, and are natives of this land, and were not brought from 

 Spain," mentions " verdolagas or pertulaca," and " bledos or 

 bletum" (Blitimi). 



In his descrijDtion of " perebene^uc," written in 1525, he 

 says that plant grew in great abundance in Saint Domingo 

 and in many places on the continent, in the woods and fields ; 

 even " purslane Q verdolagas ') is not more abundant here " 

 (id., lib. xi. c. 5, p. 378). 



Jean de Lery, in Brazil in 1557, w^as as much impressed 

 by the novelty of the flora as Columbus had been in the 

 West Indies. " I declare," he wrote (Hist. Navig. Brazil., 

 168), " as far as it was permitted me to discover in wander- 

 ings through the woods and fields, that there are no trees or 

 plants, or any fruits, that are not unlike ours, these three 

 excepted, portulaca, ocymum, and filex " (in the original 

 French edition, 1578, p. 217, ^'pourpier, basilic, et fougiere"). 



Capt. John Smith, in Virginia in 1606, found "many herbes 

 in the spring, commonly dispersed throughout the woods, good 

 for broths and sallets, as Yiolets, Purslain, Sorrell, etc. ; be- 



