528 History of Garden Vegetables. [June 
_ Magnus is the carrot, for in the sixteenth century Ammonius" 
gives the name for the carrot pastenei, as applying to Pastinaca 
sativa and agrestis. Barbarus, who died in 1493, and Virgelius? 
both describe the carrot under the name Pastinaca; and Apicius,’ 
a writer on cookery in the third century, gives directions for 
preparing the Carota seu pastinaca, which can only apply to the 
carrot. Dioscorides? uses the word Carota as applying to the 
Pastinaca silvestris in the first century. Columella+ and Palladiuss 
both mention the fastinaca as garden plants, but say nothing but _ 
what can better apply to the carrot than the parsnip. Macer . 
Floridus® also treats of what may be the carrot under Pastinaca, 
and says no roots afford better food. 
We hence believe that the carrot was cultivated by the 
ancients, but was not a very general food-plant, and did not 
attain the modern appreciation ; that the word fastinaca, or cari- 
otam, or carota, in these times was applied to both the cultivated 
and the wild form; and we suspect that the word Gallicam, used 
by Pliny in the first century, indicates that the cultivated root 
reached Italy from France, where now it is in such exaggerated 
m. 
The Stsaron of Dioscorides and the Siser of Columella and 
Pliny may have been a form of the carrot, but we can attain no 
certainty from the descriptions. The fact that the grouping of 
the roots which occurs in the Skirret, into which authors trans- 
late Siser, is not mentioned by the ancients,—a distinction almost 
too important to be overlooked,—and that the short carrot was 
called Szser by botanists of the sixteenth century, are arguments 
in favor of the Siser being a carrot. On the other hand, we 
should scarcely expect a distinction being made between Pasti- 
naca and Siser, were both as resembling in the plant as are the 
two forms of carrot at present. 
The carrot is now found under cultivation and as an escape 
throughout a large portion of the world. In China it is noticed 
in the Yuan dynasty, as brought from Western Asia, 1280-1368,7 
and is classed as a kitchen vegetable in the sixteenth, seven- 
7 Ammonius, Med. one 1539, 186. 2 In Ruellius’s gepen 1529, 174. 
3 Apicius, lib. iii. c. 4 Columella, lib, xi. c. 3. 
5 Palladius, lib. c. 
mi oridus, De Viribus Herb., 1l. 1284, ae ed., 1832; Æmelius Macer, 
Pictorius a, 1581, 95, but a parsnip figured by Pict 
7 retechensbiles , On the Study, etc., 17. 
