406 The Principles of YegetaMe- Gardening 



is usually of a yellowish cast. There are varieties with striped 

 fruits and others with long and coiling fruits, but these are known 

 mostly as curiosities. 



Eggplant has been grown from the earliest times. It is prob- 

 ably native to India. It is a low spreading, bushy, more or less 

 hairy and spiny herb (or subshrub), with large blue flowers. It is 

 known also as Aubergine and Guinea Squash. 



It is the Solanum Melongena of botanists, but the aboriginal 

 type is not in cultivation. An historical sketch by Sturtevant 

 appears in Amer. Nat., Nov., 1887, pp. 975-9. Goff reduced 

 the varieties to twelve in 1887 (6t(i Kept. N. Y. State Exp. Sta., 

 pp. 273-9) ; fourteen names were offered by American seedsmen 

 in 1889. He divided them into four main groups on color dis- 

 tinctions, and made minor divisions on shape of fruit. In 1891 

 the present writer described (in Bull. 26, Cornell Exp. Sta.), 

 fifteen varieties. He made the following botanical scheme: 



I. Solanum Melongena^ var. esculentum. Plant stout and erect, 

 mostly tall; leaves and branches more or less densely scurfy; 

 leaves mostly conspicuously angled or lobed, thick ; flowers large 

 and thick, on stout peduncles ; fruit various, globular or oblong, 

 white or purple. The ordinary form of the eggplant is w^ell shown 

 in Fig. 127. 



Var. serpentinum . This differs from the var. esculentum chiefly 

 in the greatly elongated fruit, which is curled at the end, and 

 perhaps it is not worth separation. It is a most singular eggplant. 



Var. depressum. Plant low, weak and diffuse, dark colored, 

 nearly smooth, always spineless; leaves small and comparatively 

 thin, more entire, often scarcely angled; flowers small, mostly 

 long-peduncled; fruit purple, pyriform. 



II. Solanum integrifolium . This species is sold as the Chinese 

 Scarlet and Ornamental eggplant, and it is the one that has been 

 lately distributed as a great novelty under the name of tomato 

 eggplant. It goes under the name of Solanum coccineum. Its 

 nativity appears to be wholly unknown. Dunal says that S. integri- 

 folium is a native of Mauritius, but Baker, in his flora of Mauritius, 

 does not mention it. It is probably African. At any rate, it 

 appears, to be proper to recall the name under which it was long 



