HORTICULTURAL JOURNAL. 135 



originally existed, which has been so modified by art and human skill, in 

 conformity with man's necessities or uses, that it is no longer capable of 

 being recognized as such, though existing in its wild state, or together with 

 the form produced by culture. That such alterations of plants have been 

 effected by cultivation, and are now become permanent, is beyond question. 

 Our biennial cultivated carrots, with their succulent well-flavored roots, may 

 be produced in perfection after some generations, by the art of the gardener, 

 from the annual wild form, whose root is dry and of an acrid taste (Lond. 

 Hortic. Soc. Trans, ii. 348). We cannot, however, prove the origin of 

 other cultivated plants by experiment ; we are ignorant, for instance, how 

 the cauliflower originated from the normal form of our coleworts. The wild 

 form of our potatoes is far from being perfectly known. Of many forms 

 found apparently wild in the lower mountains of South America and Mexico, 

 which have been introduced into systematic natural history under the names 

 of Solatium Commersoni, maglia, etuberosum, minute, verrucosum, utile, 

 stoloniferum, &c, (D. C. Prod. Syst. Veg. xiii. s. 1, 32, 677 ; J. D. Hooker, 

 Bot. Antarct. Voy. 32), sometimes one, sometimes another is brought for- 

 ward in proof that an alteration of the original form has been effected 

 by culture, which by repeated reproduction has become permanent, 

 but whose derivation from that particular species has not been observed. 

 A similar origin has been assumed for our species of corn, especially for the 

 most important of them, viz : wheat, but no one had succeeded in indicating 

 the original form, and the alterations which had taken place. That this, 

 however, has been effected, we are assured by M. Esprit Fabre, an intelli- 

 gent gardener at Agde, near Montpellier, to whom we are indebted for some 

 excellent observations on the plants of his rich neighborhood (Ann. des Sc. 

 Nat. 2, Ser. vi. 378, 3 Ser. xiii., 122). The observations on which this 

 result is grounded, have been published by the author himself very briefly 

 in a small pamphlet entitled a Des iEgilops du midi de la France et de leur 

 Transformation," 20 s. in 4to., with three lithographic plates ; and Prof. 

 Felix Dunal, of Montpellier, has added a short preface and appendix, and I 

 have myself, when at Montpellier in the autumn of 1851, had an opportu- 

 nity of examining some dried specimens of the plants resulting from the 

 experiments of M. Fabre, which had been communicated by him to his 

 friends in that neighborhood. M. Fabre considers iEgilops ovata and 'M. 

 triaristata, of which the first especially abounds everywhere on the coasts of 

 the Mediterranean, as the parent plants of our wheat, an opinion by no 

 means new, but one which had never before been supported by such weighty 

 arguments. The genera ^gilops and Triticum, it is well known, though 



