136 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 



I shall not repeat here what may be found in several 

 excellent treatises on the coca ; ^ I need only say that the 

 original home of the species in America is not yet clearly 

 ascertained. Gosse has shown that early authors, such as 

 Jose])h de Jussieu, Lamarck, and Cavanilles, had only seen 

 cultivated specimens. Mathews gathered it in Peru, in 

 the ravine {quehrada) of Chinchao,^ which appears to be a 

 place beyond the limits of cultivation. Some specimens 

 from Cuchero, collected by Poeppig,^ are said to be wild , 

 but the traveller himself was not convinced of their wild 

 nature.* D'Orbigny thinks he saw the wild coca on 

 a hill in the eastern part of Bolivia.^ Lastly, M. Andrd 

 has had the courtesy to send me the specimens of Ery- 

 throxylon in his herbarium, and I recognized the coca in 

 several specimens from the valley of the river Cauca in 

 New Granada, with the note " in abundance, wild or half- 

 wild." Triana, however, does not admit that the species 

 is wild in his country, New Granada.® Its extreme im- 

 portance in Peru at the time of the Incas, compared to 

 the rarity of its use in New Granada, seems to show 

 that it has escaped from cultivation in places where it 

 occurs in the latter country, and that the species is in- 

 digenous only in the east of Peru and Bolivia, according 

 to the indications of the travellers mentioned above. 



Dyer's Indigo. — Indigofera tinctoria, Linnseus. 



The Sanskrit name is nili.'' The Latin name, 

 indicum, shows that the Romans knew that the indigo 

 was a substance brought from India. As to the wild 

 nature of the plant, Roxburgh says, " Native place un- 

 known, for, though it is now common in a wild state in 

 most of the provinces of India, it is seldom found far from 

 the districts where it is now cultivated, or has been culti- 

 vated formerly." Wight and Royle, who have published 

 illustrations of the species, tell us nothing on this head, 



• Particularly in Gosee's Monogrwphie de I' Eryth/roieylon Coca, in 

 Svo, 1861. 



' Hooker, Comp. to the Bot. Mag., ii. p, 25. 



• Peyritsch, in the Flora Brasil., faao. 81, p. 156. 



• Hooker, Qoinvp. to the Bot. Mag. » Gesso, Monogr., p. 12. 



' Triana and Planohon, Arm. Sciences Nat., 4th series, vol. 18, p. 338 

 ' Koxburgh, Fl. Ind., iii. p. 379. 



