Review by Mr. Bentham in 'Hort. Journal' volume 9 1855 page 133 entitled 'Historical Notes on cultivated Plants' by Dr. A. Targioni-Tozzetti. See also 'Edinburgh Review' 1866 page 510.) entertain great doubts. Of 40 of them, the origin is admitted by M. De Candolle to be doubtful, either from a certain amount of dissimilarity which they present when compared with their nearest allies in a wild state, or from the probability of the latter not being truly wild plants, but seedlings escaped from culture. Of the entire 157, 32 alone are ranked by M. De Candolle as quite unknown in their aboriginal condition. But it should be observed that he does not include in his list several plants which present ill-defined characters, namely, the various forms of pumpkins, millet, sorghum, kidney-bean, dolichos, capsicum, and indigo. Nor does he include flowers; and several of the more anciently cultivated flowers, such as certain roses, the common Imperial lily, the tuberose, and even the lilac, are said (9/3. 'Hist. Notes' as above by Targioni-Tozzetti.) not to be known in the wild state.
From the relative numbers above given, and from other arguments of much weight, M. De Candolle concludes that plants have rarely been so much modified by culture that they cannot be identified with their wild prototypes. But on this view, considering that savages probably would not have chosen rare plants for cultivation, that useful plants are generally conspicuous, and that they could not have been the inhabitants of deserts or of remote and recently discovered islands, it appears strange to me that so many of our cultivated plants should be still unknown or only doubtfully known in the wild state. If, on the other hand, many of these plants have been profoundly modified by culture, the difficulty disappears. The difficulty would also be removed if they have been exterminated during the progress of civilisation; but M. De Candolle has shown that this probably has seldom occurred. As soon as a plant was cultivated in any country, the half-civilised inhabitants would no longer have need to search the whole surface of the land for it, and thus lead to its extirpation; and even if this did occur during a famine, dormant seeds would be left in the ground. In tropical countries the wild luxuriance of nature, as was long ago remarked by Humboldt, overpowers the feeble efforts of man. In anciently civilised temperate countries, where the whole face of the land has been greatly changed, it can hardly be doubted that some plants have become extinct; nevertheless De Candolle has shown that all the plants historically known to have been first cultivated in Europe still exist here in the wild state.
MM. Loiseleur-Deslongchamps (9/4. 'Considerations sur les Cereales' 1842 page 37. 'Geographie Bot.' 1855 page 930. "Plus on suppose l'agriculture ancienne et remontant a une epoque d'ignorance, plus il est probable que les cultivateurs avaient choisi des especes offrant a l'origine meme un avantage incontestable.") and De Candolle have remarked that our cultivated plants, more especially the cereals, must originally have existed in nearly their present state; for otherwise they would not have been noticed and valued as objects of food. But these authors apparently have not considered the many accounts given by travellers of the wretched food collected by savages. I have read an account of the savages of Australia cooking, during a dearth, many vegetables in various ways, in the hopes of rendering them innocuous and more nutritious. Dr. Hooker found the half-starved inhabitants of a village in Sikhim suffering greatly from having eaten arum-roots (9/5. Dr. Hooker has given me this information. See also his 'Himalayan Journals' 1854 volume 2 page 49.), which they had pounded and left for several days to ferment, so as partially to destroy their poisonous nature; and he adds that they cooked and ate many other deleterious plants. Sir Andrew Smith informs me that in South Africa a large number of fruits and succulent leaves, and especially roots, are used in times of scarcity.