AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 



The knowledge of the origin of cultivated plants is 

 interesting to agriculturists, to botanists, and even to 

 historians and philosophers concerned with the dawnings 

 of civilization. 



I went into this question of origin in a chapter in my 

 work on geographical botany ; but the book has become 

 scarce, and, moreover, since 1855 important facts have 

 been discovered by travellers, botanists, and archae- 

 ologists. Instead of publishing a second edition, I have 

 drawn up an entirely new and more extended work, 

 which treats of the origin of almost double the number of 

 species belonging to the tropics and the temperate zones. 

 It includes almost aU plants which are cultivated, either 

 on a large scale for economic purposes, or in orchards and 

 kitchen gardens. 



I have always aimed at discovering the condition and 

 the habitat of each species before it was cultivated. It 

 was needful to this end to distinguish from among 

 innumerable varieties that which should be regarded as 

 the most ancient, and to find out from what quarter of 



