PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 349 



has only seen it in a cultivated state in the north of 

 India, and Bretschneider ^ thinks it doubtful that it is 

 indigenous in China. Its cultivation is not ancient, for 

 the first Chinese author who mentions it lived in the 

 tenth or eleventh century of the Christian era. 



Buckwheat is cultivated in the Himal^as under the 

 names ogal or ogla and Jcouton.^ As there is no Sanskrit 

 name for this species nor for the two following, I doubt 

 the antiquity of their cultivation in the mountains of 

 Central Asia. It was certainly unknown to the Greeks 

 and Romans. The name fagopyrum is an invention of 

 modem botanists from the similarity in the shape of the 

 hseed to a beech-nut, whence also the German huch- 

 iveitzen^ (corrupted in English into buckwheat) and the 

 I talian faggina. 



The names o£ this plant in European languages of 

 Arj'^an origin have not a common root. Thus the western 

 Aryans did not know the species any more than the 

 Sanskrit-speaking Orientals, a further sign of the non- 

 existence of the plant in the mountains of Central Asia. 

 Even at the present day it is probably unknown in the 

 north of Persia and in Turkey, since floras do not men- 

 tion it.* Bosc states, in the Dictionnaire d' Agriculture, 

 that Olivier had seen it wild in Persia, but I do not find 

 this in this naturalist's published account of his travels. 



The species came into Europe in the Middle Ages, 

 through Tartary and Russia. The first mention of its 

 cultivation in Germany occurs in a Mecklenburg register 

 of 1436.^ In the sixteenth century it spread towards the 

 dentre of Europe, and in poor soil, as in Brittany, it be- 

 came important. Reynier, who, as a rule, is very accurate, 

 imagined that the French name sarrasin was Keltic ; " 

 but M. le Gall wrote to me formerly that the Breton 

 names simply mean black wheat or black com, ecl-du 



' BretBolineider, On Study, etc., p. 9. 



* Madden, Trans. Edinlwgh Bot. Soc, v. p. 118. 



" The English name huckwlieat and the French name of some 

 localitiea, huscail, come from the German. 



* Boissicr, Fl. Orient. ; Buhse and Boissier, Pflanzen Transcaucasien. 

 ' Pritzel, SiizungsiencMNatwrfornch. freiinde zu Berlin, May 15, 18(56. 

 ' Eeynier, £conomie des Celfes, p. 425. 



