138 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTa 



Henna — Lawsonia alba, Lamarck (Lawsonia itiermis 

 and L. spinosa of different authors). 



The custom among Eastern women of staining their 

 nails red with the juice of henna-leaves dates from a 

 remote antiquity, as ancient Egyptian paintings and 

 mummies show. 



It is difficult to know when and in what country this 

 species was first cultivated to fulfil the requirements of a 

 fashion as absurd as it is persistent, but it may be from 

 a very early epoch, since the inhabitants of Babylon, 

 Nineveh, and the towns of Egypt had gardens. It may 

 be left to scholars to show whether the practice of stain- 

 ing the nails began in Egypt under this or that dynasty, 

 before or after certain relations were established with 

 Eastern nations. It is enough for our purpose to know 

 that Laiusonia, a shrub belonging to the order of the 

 Lythracese, is more or less wild in the warm regions of 

 Western Asia and of Africa to the north of the equator. 



I have in my possession specimens from India, Java, 

 Timor, even from China ^ and Nubia, which are not said 

 to be taken from cultivated plants, and others from 

 Guiana and the West Indies, which ai'e doubtless fur- 

 nished by the imported species. Stocks found it indige- 

 nous in Beluchistan.^ Roxburgh also considered it to be 

 wild on the Coromandel ^ ceast, and Thwaites * mentions 

 it in Ceylon in a manner which seems to show that it is 

 wild there. Clarke ^ says, " very common, and cultivated 

 in India, perhaps wild in the eastern part." It is pos- 

 sible that it spread into India from its original home, as 

 into Amboyna " in the seventeenth century, and perhaps 

 more recently into the West Indies,^ in the wake of culti- 

 vation ; for the plant is valued for the scent of its flowers, 

 as well as for the dye, and is easily propagated by seed. 



" Fortune, No. 32. 



' Aitchison, Catal. of PI, of Punjab and Sindh, p. 60 ; Boissieri Fk 

 Orient., ii. p. V44. 



» Roxburgh, Fl. Ind., ii. p. 258. 



* Thwaites, Fnum. PI. Z&yl., p. 122. 



' Clarke, in Hooker's Fl. Brit. Ind., ii. p. 273. 



• Bamphitis, Amb., iv. p. 42. 



' Grisebaoh, Fl. Brit. W. Ind., i. p. 271. 



