306 PRELIMINARY REMARKS, Chap. IX. 



ally given. One chief object in the two following chapters is 

 to show how generally almost every character in onr culti- 

 vated plants has become variable. 



Before entering on details a few general remarks on the origin 

 of cultivated plants may be introduced. M. Alph. cle Candolle l 

 in an admirable discussion on this subject, in which he displays 

 a wonderful amount of knowledge, gives a list of 157 of the 

 most useful cultivated plants. Of these he believes that 85 are 

 almost certainly known in their wild state ; but on this head 

 other competent judges 2 entertain great doubts. Of 40 of them, 

 the origin is admitted by M. De Candolle to be doubtful, either 

 from a certain amount of dissimilarity which they present when 

 compared with their nearest allies in a wild state, or from the 

 probability of the latter not being truly wild plants, but seed- 

 lings escaped from culture. Of the entire 157, 32 alone are 

 ranked by M. De Candolle as quite unknown in their abori- 

 ginal condition. But it should be observed that he does not in- 

 clude in his list several plants which present ill-defined characters, 

 namely, the various forms of pumpkins, millet, sorghum, kidney- 

 bean, dolichos, capsicum, and indigo. Nor does he include 

 flowers ; and several of the more anciently cultivated flowers, 

 such as certain roses, the common Imperial lily, the tuberose, 

 and even the lilac, are said 3 not to be known in the wild state. 



From the relative numbers above given, and from other 

 arguments of much weight, M. De Candolle concludes that 

 plants have rarely been so much modified by culture that 

 they cannot be identified with their wild prototypes. But on 

 this view, considering that savages probably would not have 

 chosen rare plants for cultivation, that useful plants are gene- 

 rally conspicuous, and that they could not have been the inhabit- 

 ants of deserts or of remote and recently discovered islands, 

 it appears strange to me that so many of our cultivated plants 

 should be still unknown or only doubtfully known in the wild 

 state. If, on the other hand, many of these plants have been 

 profoundly modified by culture, the difficulty disappears. Their 



1 ' Geographie Botanique Raisonnee,' by Dr. A. Targioni-Tozzetti. See also 

 1855, pp. 810 to 991. ' Edinburgh Review,' 1866, p. 510. 



2 Review by Mr. Bentham in • Hort. 3 ' Hist. Notes,' as above, by Targioni- 

 Journal,' vol. ix. 1855, p. 133, entitled Tozzetti. 



' Historical Notes on cultivated Plants,' 



