The Mangifera which this author had seen wild in Java, and Mangifera sylvatiea which Roxburgh had discovered at Silhet, are other species; but the true mango is indicated by modern authors as wild in the forests of Ceylon, the regions at the base of the Himalayas, especially towards the east, in Arracan, Pegu, and the Andaman Isles.[985] Miquel does not mention it as wild in any of the islands of the Malay Archipelago. In spite of its growing in Ceylon, and the indications, less positive certainly, of Sir Joseph Hooker in the Flora of British India, the species is probably rare or only naturalized in the Indian Peninsula. The size of the stone is too great to allow of its being transported by birds, but the frequency of its cultivation causes a dispersion by man’s agency. If the mango is only naturalized in the west of British India, this must have occurred at a remote epoch, as the existence of a Sanskrit name shows. On the other hand, the peoples of Western Asia must have known it late, since they did not transport the species into Egypt or elsewhere towards the west.
It is cultivated at the present day in tropical Africa, and even in Mauritius and the Seychelles, where it has become to some extent naturalized in the woods.[986]
In the new world it was first introduced into Brazil, for the seeds were brought thence to Barbados in the middle of the last century.[987] A French vessel was carrying some young trees from Bourbon to Saint Domingo in 1782, when it was taken by the English, who took them to Jamaica, where they succeeded wonderfully. When the coffee plantations were abandoned, at the time of the emancipation of the slaves, the mango, whose stones the negroes scattered everywhere, formed forests in every part of the islands, and these are now valued both for their shade and as a form of food.[988] It was not cultivated in Cayenne in the time of Aublet, at the end of the eighteenth century, but now there are mangoes of the finest kind in this colony. They are grafted, and it is observed that their stones produce better fruit than that of the original stock.[989]
Tahiti Apple—Spondias dulcis, Forster.
This tree belongs to the family of the Anacardiaceæ, and is indigenous in the Society, Friendly, and Fiji Islands.[990] The natives consumed quantities of the fruit at the time of Cook’s voyage. It is like a large plum, of the colour of an apple, and contains a stone covered with long hooked bristles.[991] The flavour, according to travellers, is excellent. It is not among the fruits most widely diffused in tropical colonies. It is, however, cultivated in Mauritius and Bourbon, under the primitive Polynesian name evi or hevi,[992] and in the West Indies. It was introduced into Jamaica in 1782, and thence into Saint Domingo. Its absence in many of the hot countries of Asia and Africa is probably owing to the fact that the species was discovered, only a century ago, in small islands which have no communications with other countries.
Strawberry—Fragaria vesca, Linnæus.
Our common strawberry is one of the most widely diffused plants, partly owing to the small size of its seeds, which birds, attracted by the fleshy part on which they are found, carry to great distances.
It grows wild in Europe, from Lapland and the Shetland Isles[993] to the mountain ranges in the south; in Madeira, Spain, Sicily, and in Greece.[994] It is also found in Asia, from Armenia and the north of Syria[995] to Dahuria. The strawberries of the Himalayas and of Japan,[996] which several authors have attributed to this species, do not perhaps belong to it,[997] and this makes me doubt the assertion of a missionary[998] that it is found in China. It is wild in Iceland,[999] in the north-east of the United States,[1000] round Fort Cumberland, and on the north-west coast,[1001] perhaps even in the Sierra-Nevada of California.[1002] Thus its area extends round the north pole, except in Eastern Siberia and the basin of the river Amur, since the species is not mentioned by Maximowicz in his Primitiæ Floræ Amurensis. In America its area is extended along the highlands of Mexico; for Fragaria mexicana, cultivated in the Jardin des Plantes, and examined by Gay, is F. vesca. It also grows round Quito, according to the same botanist, who is an authority on this question.[1003]
The Greeks and Romans did not cultivate the strawberry. Its cultivation was probably introduced in the fifteenth or sixteenth century. Champier, in the sixteenth century, speaks of it as a novelty in the north of France,[1004] but it already existed in the south, and in England.[1005]
Transported into gardens in the colonies, the strawberry has become naturalized in a few cool localities far from dwellings. This is the case in Jamaica,[1006] in Mauritius,[1007] and in Bourbon, where some plants had been placed by Commerson on the table-land known as the Kaffirs’ Plain. Bory Saint-Vincent relates that in 1801 he found districts quite red with strawberries, and that it was impossible to cross them without staining the feet red with the juice, mixed with volcanic dust.[1008] It is probable that similar cases of naturalization may be seen in Tasmania and New Zealand.