10-i ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 



makes me note as a singular fact that no Sanskrit nafee 

 is known.^ Clover and sainfoin have none either, which 

 leads us to suppose that the Aryans had no artificial 

 meadows. 



Sainfoin — Hedysarum Onobryehis, Linnaeus ; Onohry- 

 chis sativa, Lamarck. 



This leguminous plant, of which the usefulness in the 

 dry and chalky soils of temperate regions is incontestable, 

 has not been long in cultivation. The Greeks did not 

 grow it, and their descendants have not introduced it 

 into their agriculture to this day.^ The plant called 

 Onobryehis by Dioscorides and Pliny, is Onobryehis 

 Gaput-Galli of modem botanists,^ a species wild in Greece 

 and elsewhere, which is not cultivated. The sainfoin, or 

 l-upinella of the Italians, was highly esteemed as fodder 

 in the south of France in the time of Olivier de Serres,* 

 that is to say, in the sixteenth century ; but in Italy it 

 was only in the eighteenth century that this cultivation 

 spread, particularly in Tuscany.® 



Sainfoin is a herbaceous plant, which grows wild in 

 the temperate parts of Europe, to the south of the 

 Caucasus, round the Caspian Sea,^ and even beyond Lake 

 Baikal.'' In the south of Europe it grows only on the 

 hills. Gussone does not reckon it among the wild species 

 of Sicily, nor Moris among those of Sardinia, nor Munby 

 among those of Algeria. 



No Sanskrit, Persian, or Arabic names are known. 

 Everything tends to show that the cultivation of this 

 plant originated in the south of France as late perhaps 

 as the fifteenth century. 



French Honeysuckle, or Spanish Sainfoin — Hedysarum 

 coronarium, Linnsus. 



The cultivation of this leguminous plant, akin to the 



' Piddin^ton, Index. 



' Heldreich, Nutzpfiannen Oriechenlands, p. 72. 



' rraas, Synopsis Fl. Glass., p. 58; Lenz, Bot. der Alien Or. mid 

 dom., p. 731. 



* O. de Seires, Thddtre de VAgric, p. 242. 



' Targioni-Tozzetti, Oenni Storici, p. 34. 



' Ledebour, Fl. Ross., i. p. 708; Boissier, PI. Or., p. 532, 



' Turczaniuow, Flora Baical. Dahur., i. p. 340. 



