Alphonse De Candolle

“ At the same time, the indigenous species are very poor. It is not merely the want of intelligence or of security which has prevented the inhabitants from cultivating them. The nature of the indigenous flora has so much to do with it, that the Europeans, established in these countries for a hundred years, have only cultivated a single species, the Tetragonia, an insignificant green vegetable. ”

“ Science has succeeded in discovering the geographical origin of nearly all cultivated species; but there is less progress in the knowledge of species in a natural state—that is wild, far from cultivation and dwellings. ”

“ When a savage population has recently been visited, for the first time, by the infection of small-pox, it has suffered as much as the Europeans at the beginning of the malady in Europe. It is the fact of invading a new field which renders epidemics destructive. ”

“ The difference in value, however great, which is found among plants already improved by culture, is less than that which exists between cultivated plants and others completely wild. Selection, that great factor which Darwin has had the merit of introducing so happily into science, plays an important part when once agriculture is established; but in every epoch, and especially in its earliest stage, the choice of species is more important than the selection of varieties. ”

“ If modern, civilized peoples, who have great facilities for comparing species, learning their origin and verifying their names in books, have made such mistakes, it is probable that ancient nations have made many and more grave errors. Scholars display vast learning in explaining the philological origin of a name, or its modifications in derived languages, but they cannot discover popular errors or absurdities. It is left for botanists to discover and point them out. ”

“ The various causes which favour or obstruct the beginnings of agriculture, explain why certain regions have been for thousands of years peopled by husbandmen, while others are still inhabited by nomadic tribes. ”

“ When we desire to make use of the common names to gather from them certain probabilities regarding the origin of species, it is necessary to consult dictionaries and the dissertations of philologists; but we must take into account the chances of error in these learned men, who, since they are neither cultivators nor botanists, may have made mistakes in the application of a name to a species. ”

“ Cultivated species may have changed their abode before cultivation, or in the course of a longer time they may have changed their form; this belongs to the general study of all organized life, and we are concerned only with the examination of each species since its cultivation or in the time immediately before it. ”

“ The law of events (force des choses) introduces then a variation in the intensity of every disease, except that it does not act upon diseases of which people rarely die, or which fall principally upon the aged. The more fatal a disease among youth, the quicker is the work of the law of selection, and the more prompt the diminution of the malady. ”

“ War and the chase often interrupt attempts at cultivation. Rivalry and mistrust cause the imitation of one tribe by another to make but slow progress. If some great personage command the cultivation of a plant, and institute some ceremonial to show its utility, it is probably because obscure and unknown men have previously spoken of it, and that successful experiments have been already made. ”

“ It is better to insist upon the distinction of the forms observed in a wild state, especially upon those from which man derives no advantage, and which have probably remained as they were before the existence of gardens. ”

“ In America, if we may judge from the civilizations of Mexico and Peru, which do not go back even to the first centuries of the Christian era, agriculture was not, probably, as ancient as in Asia and Egypt. But the immense dispersion of certain kinds of cultivation—as that of maize, of tobacco, and of the yam—leads us to assign an antiquity of nearly or about two thousand years to it. ”

“ Such are the clear laws—one might add the rigid laws—which rule in diseases, to produce aggravation or diminution, independently of all these natural circumstances. Without doubt there may be other circumstances, physical or physiological, and physicians may discover preventive or curative means which exert influence upon them. ”

“ Where there is such confusion it would be the best course for botanists to seek with care the Gossypia, which are wild in America, to constitute the one or more species solely upon these, leaving to the cultivated species their strange and often absurd and misleading names. ”

“ For there are naturalized species, that is, those that are introduced among the plants of the ancient flora, and which, although of foreign origin, persist there in such a manner that observation alone cannot distinguish them, so that historical records or botanical considerations, whether simple or geographical, are needed for their detection. ”

“ After gaining information from the collector who sees the plants in a given spot or district, and who draws up a flora or a catalogue of species, it is indispensable to study the known or probable geographical distribution in books and in herbaria, and to reflect upon the principles of geographical botany and on the questions of classification, which cannot be done by travelling or collecting. ”

“ When once a cultivated plant has been reduced to such a condition as permits of its being reasonably compared with analogous spontaneous forms, we have still to decide what group of nearly similar plants it is proper to designate as constituting a species. Botanists alone are competent to pronounce an opinion on this question, since they are accustomed to appreciate differences and resemblances, and know the confusion of certain works in the matter of nomenclature. This is not the place to discuss what may reasonably be termed a species. ”

“ In the north of Asia, Europe, and America, the temperature is unfavorable, and the indigenous plants are sparsely productive; but, as the resources of hunting and fishing are available, the introduction of agriculture could be delayed, and the people could do without the valuable species of the South without suffering much. ”

“ Doubtless the number of species of animals and vegetables which may be reared or cultivated for pleasure or curiosity is very large: witness menageries and zoological and botanical gardens, but I am only speaking here of useful plants and animals, in general and customary employment. ”

“ In spite of these exceptional cases, it is evident that if nearly allied forms can be easily crossed and produce fertile individuals, as we see, for example, in the human species, they must be considered as constituting a single species.
In this sense Cucumis Melo, according to the experiments and observations made by Naudin upon about two thousand living plants, constitutes a species which comprehends an extraordinary number of varieties and even of breeds ”

“ When men can live without working, that is what they prefer. Besides, the element of chance in hunting and fishing tempts primitive men—and some civilized ones too—more than do the difficult and regular labors of agriculture. To return to the species which savages may be disposed to cultivate. ”

“ Each can only lead to probabilities, since we are dealing with facts of ancient date which are beyond the reach of direct and actual observation. Fortunately, if the same probability is attained in three or four different ways, we approach very near to certainty. ”

“ Moreover, he had to complete his description of the plants of France, and that was not done until 1815.
De Candolle was always fond of society, and, after his labours of the day, was glad to go into or receive company. Being a Protestant, and a man of mark in his native town, he was well received by most of the families of Montpellier, and his wife also. Society consisted of good Protestant families of old, so-called nobles, and some who thought themselves nobles. ”

“ In spite of these records, and of all my researches, there still remain several species which are unknown wild. In the cases where these come from regions not completely explored by botanists, or where they belong to genera as yet insufficiently studied, there is hope that the wild plant may be one day discovered. But this hope is fallacious in the case of well-known species and countries. ”

“ There are not perhaps more than two hundred species of domestic animals—that is, reared for our use,—and the animal kingdom reckons millions of species. In the great class of molluscs the oyster alone is cultivated, and in that of the Articulata, which counts ten times more species than the vegetable kingdom, we can only name the bee and two or three silk-producing insects. ”

“ It has been commonly asserted, even in our own day, that a species cultivated in America or China is a native of America or China. A no less common error is the belief that a species comes originally from a given country because it has come to us from thence, and not direct from the place in which it is really indigenous. Thus the Greeks and Romans called the peach the Persian apple, because they had seen it cultivated in Persia, where it probably did not grow wild. ”

“ They find them sometimes in their own country, but frequently they receive them from neighboring people who are more favored by natural conditions than they, or have already entered upon some degree of civilization. ”

“ No doubt the researches of a philologist into etymologies are more profound and valuable, but this is rarely necessary when our researches have to do with cultivated plants. Other sciences are more useful, especially that of botany; and philologists are more often deficient in these than naturalists are deficient in philology, for the very evident reason that more place is given to languages than to natural history in general education. ”

“ Botanists are in many cases forced to doubt the common names attributed to plants by travellers, historians, and philologists. This is a consequence of their own doubts respecting the distinction of species and of the well-known difficulty of ascertaining the common name of a plant. The uncertainty becomes yet greater in the case of species which are more easily confounded or less generally known, or in the case of the languages of little-civilized nations. ”

“ The naturalist is here no longer in his ordinary domain of observation and description; he must support himself by historical proof, which is never demanded in the laboratory; and botanical facts are required, not with respect to the physiology of plants—a favourite study of the present day—but with regard to the distinction of species and their geographical distribution. ”

“ Although the author has not yet seen the product of several generations, he has ascertained that the most distinct principal forms can be crossed with ease and produce fertile hybrids. If fertilization be taken as a measure of the intimate degree of affinity which leads to the grouping of individuals into the same species, we cannot hesitate in the case in question, especially with the support of the historical considerations which I have given. ”

“ Agriculture seems, then, to have been as ancient in China as in Egypt. The constant intercourse of the latter country with Mesopotamia justifies us in presuming that cultivation was almost contemporaneous in the regions of the Euphrates and the Nile. ”

“ We have just shown that the history and the vernacular names of the great races of wheat are in favour of a derivation contemporary with man, probably not very ancient, from the common kind of wheat, perhaps from the small-grained wheat formerly cultivated by the Egyptians, and by the lake-dwellers of Switzerland and Italy. ”

“ In the progress of civilization the beginnings are usually feeble, obscure, and limited. There are reasons why this should be the case with the first attempts at agriculture or horticulture. Between the custom of gathering wild fruits, grain, and roots, and that of the regular cultivation of the plants which produce them, there are several steps. A family may scatter seeds around its dwelling, and provide itself the next year with the same product in the forest. ”

“ The most backward savages are acquainted with the plants of their own country; but the Australians and Patagonians are examples to show that, if they do not judge them productive and easy to raise, they do not think of putting them under cultivation. ”

“ Thus my researches into cultivated plants show that certain species are extinct or becoming extinct since the historical epoch, and that not in small islands but on vast continents without any great modifications of climate. ”

“ The identity of a common name for a given species in several languages may have two very different explanations. It may be because a plant has been spread by a people which has been dispersed and scattered. It may also result from the transmission of a plant from one people to another with the name it bore in its original home. The first case is that of the hemp, of which the name is similar, at least as to the root, in all the tongues derived from the primitive Aryan stock. ”

“ Geographical botany teaches us what countries have genera and even species in common, in spite of a certain distance, and what, on the contrary, are very different, in spite of similarity of climate or inconsiderable distance. It also teaches us what species, genera, and families are scattered over a wide area, and the more limited extent of others. These data are of great assistance in determining the probable origin of a given species. Naturalized plants spread rapidly. ”

“ A longer or shorter succession of local and short-lived experiments must have occurred before such a display, which is calculated to impress an already numerous public. It is easy to understand that there must have been determining causes to excite these attempts, to renew them, to make them successful. ”

“ We may expect, therefore, to find the fruit of a wild fruit tree small and of a doubtfully agreeable flavour, the grain of a cereal in its wild state small, the tubercles of a wild potato small, the leaves of indigenous tobacco narrow, etc., without, however, going so far as to imagine that the species developed rapidly under cultivation, for man would not have begun to cultivate it if it had not from the beginning presented some useful or agreeable qualities. ”