74 
ORIGIN OF DOMESTIC l’LANTS. 
same properties as when sown and reared by human art.* In 
fact, the cases are rare where the identity of a wild with a 
domesticated plant is considered by the best authorities as con¬ 
clusively established, and we are warranted in affirming of but 
few of the latter, as a historically known or experimentally 
proved fact, that they ever did exist, or could exist, independ¬ 
ently of man.f 
* Some recent observations of the learned traveller Wetzstein are 
worthy of special notice. u The soil of the Haurun,” he remarks, “ produces, 
in its primitive condition, mucb wild rye, which is not known as a culti¬ 
vated plant in Syria, and much wild barley and oats. These cereals pre¬ 
cisely resemble the corresponding cultivated plants in leaf, ear, size, and 
height of straw, but their grains are sensibly flatter and poorer in flour.”— 
Reisebericht uber Haurdn und die Trachonen , p. 40. 
t This remark is much less applicable to fruit trees than to garden vege¬ 
tables and the cerealia. The wild orange of Florida, though once consid¬ 
ered indigenous, is now generally thought by botanists to be descended 
from the European orange introduced by the early colonists. The fig and 
the olive are found growing wild in every country where those trees are 
cultivated. The wild fig differs from the domesticated in its habits, its 
season of fructification, and its insect population, but is, I believe, not 
specifically distinguishable from the garden fig, though I do not know that 
it is reclaimable by cultivation. The wild olive, which is so abundant in 
the Tuscan Haremma, produces good fruit without further care, when 
thinned out and freed from the shade of other trees, and is particu¬ 
larly suited for grafting. See Salvagnoli, Memorie sulle Maremme , pp. 
63-73. 
Fkaas, Klima und Pflanzenwelt in der Zeit , pp. 35-38, gives, upon the 
authority of Link and other botanical writers, a list of the native habitats 
of most cereals and of many fruits, or at least of localities where these 
plants are said to be now found wild ; but the data do not appear to rest, 
in general, upon very trustworthy evidence. Theoretically, there can be 
little doubt that all our cultivated plants are modified forms of spontaneous 
vegetation, but the connection is not historically shown, nor are we able to 
say that the originals of some domesticated vegetables may not be now ex¬ 
tinct and unrepresented in the existing wild flora. See, on this subject, 
Humboldt, Amichten der Natur, i, pp. 208, 209. The following are inter¬ 
esting incidents: “ A negro slave of the great Cortez was the first who 
sowed wheat in New Spain. He found three grains of it among the rice 
which had been brought from Spain as food for the soldiers. In the Fran¬ 
ciscan monastery at Quito, I saw the earthen pot which contained the first 
