16 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 



MM. Martins, Planchon, de Saporta, and other savants. 

 Their date is not, perhaps, always earlier than that of the 

 first lacustrine deposits, and it is possible that it agrees 

 with that of ancient Egyptian monuments, and of ancient 

 Chinese books. Lastly, the mineralogic strata, with 

 which geologists are specially concerned, tell us much 

 about the succession of vegetable forms in diflferent 

 countries; but here we are dealing with epochs far 

 anterior to agriculture, and it would be a strange and 

 certainly a most valuable chance if a modern cultivated 

 species were discovered in the European tertiary epoch. 

 No such discovery has hitherto been made with any 

 certainty, though uncultivated species have been recog- 

 nized in strata prior to the glacial epoch of the northern 

 hemisphere. For the rest, if we do not succeed in 

 finding them, the consequences will not be clear, since 

 it may be said, either that such a plant came at a later 

 date from a different region, or that it had formerly 

 another form which renders its recognition impossible 

 in a fossil state. 



4. History. Historical records are important in order 

 to determine the date of certain cultures in each country. 

 They also give indications as to the geographical origin 

 of plants when they have been propagated by the migra- 

 tions of ancient peoples, by travellers, or by military 

 expeditions. 



The assertions of authors must not, however, be 

 accepted without examination. 



The greater number of ancient historians have con- 

 fused the fact of the cultivation of a species in a country 

 with that of its previous existence there in a wild state. 

 It has been commonly asserted, even in our own day, 

 that a species cultivated in America or China is a native 

 of America or China. A no less common error is the 

 belief that a species comes originally from a given 

 country because it has come to us from thence, and not 

 direct from the place in which it is really indigenous. 

 Thus the Greeks and Romans called the peach the 

 Persian apple, because they had seen it cultivated in 

 Persia, where it probably did not grow wild. It was a 



