The aubergine has a Sanskrit name, _vartta_, and several names, which Piddington in his _Index_ considers as both Sanskrit and Bengali, such as _bong_, _bartakon_, _mahoti_, _hingoli_. Wallich, in his edition of Roxburgh’s _Indian Flora_, gives _vartta_, _varttakou_, _varttaka bunguna_, whence the Hindustani _bungan_. Hence it cannot be doubted that the species has been known in India from a very remote epoch. Rumphius had seen it in gardens in the Sunda Islands, and Loureiro in those of Cochin-China. Thunberg does not mention it in Japan, though several varieties are now cultivated in that country. The Greeks and Romans did not know the species, and no botanist mentions it in Europe before the beginning of the seventeenth century,[1427] but its cultivation must have spread towards Africa before the Middle Ages. The Arab physician, Ebn Baithar,[1428] who wrote in the thirteenth century, speaks of it, and he quotes Rhasis, who lived in the ninth century. Rauwolf[1429] had seen the plant in the gardens of Aleppo at the end of the sixteenth century. It was called _melanzana_ and _bedengiam_. This Arabic name, which Forskal writes _badinjan_, is the same as the Hindustani _badanjan_, which Piddington gives. A sign of antiquity in Northern Africa is the existence of a name, _tabendjalts_, among the Berbers or Kabyles of the province of Algiers,[1430] which differs considerably from the Arab word. Modern travellers have found the aubergine cultivated in the whole of the Nile Valley and on the coast of Guinea.[1431] It has been transported into America. The cultivated form of _Solanum melongena_ has not hitherto been found wild, but most botanists are agreed in regarding _Solanum insanum_, Roxburgh, and _S. incanum_, Linnæus, as belonging to the same species. Other synonyms are sometimes added, the result of a study made by Nees von Esenbeck from numerous specimens.[1432] _S. insanum_ appears to have been lately found wild in the Madras presidency and at Tong-dong in Burmah. The publication of the article on the Solanaceæ in the _Flora of British India_, will probably give more precise information on this head. +Red Pepper+—_Capsicum._ In the best botanical works the genus Capsicum is encumbered with a number of cultivated forms, which have never been found wild, and which differ especially in their duration (which is often variable), or in the form of the fruit, a character which is of little value in plants cultivated for that special organ. I shall speak of the two species most often cultivated, but I cannot refrain from stating my opinion that no capsicum is indigenous to the old world. I believe them to be all of American origin, though I cannot absolutely prove it. These are my reasons.