WANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 413 



Africa, which indicates a then very general cultivation 

 in Africa. Pison, in his second edition (1658, p. 256), 

 not in that of 1648, gives a figure of a similar fruit im- 

 ported from Africa into Brazil under the name maTidohi, 

 very near to the name of the Arachis, mundubi. From 

 the three leaflets of the plant it would seem to be the 

 VocmSeia, so often cultivated; but the fruit seems to 

 me to be longer than in this genus, and it has two or 

 three seeds instead of one or two. However this may 

 be, the distinction drawn by Piso between these two 

 subterranean seeds, the one Brazilian, the other Africar, 

 tends to show that the Arachis is Brazilian. 



" The antiquity and the generality of its cultivation 

 in Africa is, however, an argument of some force, which 

 compensates to a certain degree its antiquity in Brazil, 

 and the presence of six other Arachis in the same country. 

 I would admit its great value if the Arachis had been 

 known to the ancient Egyptians and to the Arabs ; but 

 the silence of Greek, Latin, and Arab authors, and the 

 absence of the species in Egypt in Forskal's time, lead 

 me to think that its cultivation in Guinea, Senegal,^ and 

 the east coast of Africa^ is not of very ancient date. 

 Neither has it the marks of a great antiquity in Asia. 

 No Sanskrit name for it is known,' but only a Hindu- 

 stani one. Rumphius * says that it was imported from 

 Japan into several islands of the Indian Archipelago. It 

 would in that case haVe borne only foreign names, like 

 the Chinese name, for instance, which signifies only 

 ' earth -bean.' At the end of the last century it was 

 generally cultivated in China and Cochin-China. Yet, in 

 spite of Rumphius's theory of an introduction into the 

 islands from China or Japan, I see that Thunberg does 

 not speak of it in his Japanese Flora. Now, Japan has 

 had dealings with China for sixteen centuries, and culti- 

 vated plants, natives of one of the two countries, were 

 commonly early introduced into the other. It is not 

 mentioned by Forster among the plants employed in the 



» Guillemin and Perrottet, Fl. Bene^al. • Loureiro, Fl. Cochin. 



« Eoxbargh, M.Ind., in. p. 280; Piddington, Indeie. 

 * Eamphius, Eei-b. Amb., T. p. 426 



