324 History of Garden Vegetables. [April 
lish; in France, Baselle rouge, Epinard rouge d Amerique, Epi- 
nard rouge de Malabar ; in Germany, Rother Malabar-spinat. 
The extra European names I find are as follows; Mauritius, 
bredes gandolle ou d’ Angole;? in Japan, murasakki ;3 in India, 
poee sag ;* in Sanscrit, pootika; in Bengali, racta-bun-pooi,; in 
Telinga, yerra-batsalla ; in Ceylon, rat-niwitis 
Basit. Ocimum sp. 
Various kinds of basil have been grown in vegetable gardens 
since a remote period, for the sake of the aromatic foliage which 
serves as a seasoning. In 1778, Mawe names thirteen varieties, 
the broad-, narrow-, and fringed-leaved, the dark green, the large 
purple and the fringed purple, the tricolored, the curled- and the 
studded-leaved, the red- and the purple-flowered, the Jong-spiked 
and the short-spiked. At the present time Vilmorin describes 
ten kinds as serviceable for the kitchen garden. In 1612, “Le 
Jardinier Solitaire” devotes a section to directions for culture, 
and Quintyne, in 1693,° grew basil among hot-bed plants. Ac- 
cording to Miss Bird,’ the seeds are eaten in Japan. 
Ocimum basilicum L. 
This species is a very variable one, and furnishes a number 
of botanical varieties. It includes the large varieties of our gar- 
dens, in both the green- and purple-foliaged, the large-, medium-, 
and narrow-leaved. It is a native of tropical Asia, and is de- 
scribed for India by Drury, for Cochin China by Loureiro, for 
Amboinia by Rumphius, for Malabar by Rheede, etc. It 
was probably known to the ancients, but the commentators are 
often in doubt as to the name. Fee® thinks it the okimon of 
Hippocrates, Theophrastus, and Dioscorides, the ocitmum hortense 
of Columella and Varro. It reached England on or before 1548, 
according to McIntosh ;9 certain it is, it is not mentioned by 
Turner in his “ Libellus,” 1 538, and is well known to Lyte in 
1586. It occurs in all the American works on gardening; com- 
mencing with 1806. 
* Vi e 2 Bojer, l. c. ; 
3 Kaempfer, Amæn., 1712, 784. 4 Speede, Ind. Handb. of Gard., 1842, 155- 
5 Birdwood, Veg. Prod. of Bomb., 177. 
* Quintyne, Comp. Gard., 1693, 188. 7 Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, i. 238. 
_ * Fee, Notes in Grandsagne’s Pliny. 9 McIntosh, Book of the Gard., ii. 237. 
