976 : History of Garden Vegetables. 
agriculture of the fifth century, and is described in later writ 
of 1590, 1640, and 1742. Acosta! mentions, as among the 
vegetables carried from Spain to America, the “ Becengenes, or 
apples of Love ;” and Piso, in 1658, figures the egg-plant among 
Brazilian plants, under the name of Belingela. = 
2 
The various European names are given as below: in Belgian 
veramgenes, eierplant; in English, apples of love, madde apples, 
egg-plant; in France, albergine, avbergine, beringene, brehhem, 
bringele, magrinan, mayenne, melanzane, merangene, meringeant, 
_verinjeane, viadase ; in Germany, Eierpflanze ; in Italy, petna- 
ano, melanzacca, maringiani; in Portugal, dringela; in Spain 
berengena.3 a 
` These names are largely derived from the Arabic melongena! 
as given by Rauwolf. 4 
The egg-plants first known in Europe appear to belong tothe 
ass we now grow for ornament, and the fruit resembling -i 
egg. They were of various colors. Fuchsius (1542) mentions 
the purple and the yellow ; Tragus (1552), who says they w 
recently reached Germany from Naples, names the same colors; 
Lyte’s “ Dodoens” (1586) reads two kinds,—one purple and m 
other pale or whitish. In 1587, Dalechamp figures three kinds 
—the one long, another obscurely pear-shaped, and the turt 
rounded, —and mentions the colors purple, yellow, 
colored; Gerarde (1597) says white, yellow, or brown; 
nzus (1616) mentions the oblong and round, white and puri 
Marcgrav, in 1648, describes a round and yellow fruit; J. Pi 
(1651) names various sorts, —the long, the deep, and pani 
yellow, purple, and whitish. Bontius, in 1658, describes 
wild plant of Java as oblong and round, or spherical, ae 
yellow; the cultivated sorts purple or white, etc. Rauw E 
particularly described these plants at Aleppo in 1574 sf 
colored, yellow, and purple. ; 
At present the purple egg-plant is almost the oa 
grown in our kitchen-gardens, but there are many sorts B 
in other regions, The purple and the white © England 
named for American gardens in 1806, as also in ~ © 
1807, in France in 1824, etc. In the Mauritius, ge n: 
7A Hist. of t : ed. , 294. We, 
a Piso, De Ind. “Cesabia pa ir eS 3 Vilmorin, Lae ner 
4 Rauwolf, Ex Bauh., Phytopin., 1596, 300. s Bojer, Hort. 
aa 
wa 
