De Martius[1450] found the plant wild in the neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro and Para, but it had perhaps escaped from gardens. I do not know of any botanist who has found it really wild in the state in which it is familiar to us, with the fruit more or less large, lumpy, and with swelled sides; but this is not the case with the variety with small spherical fruit, called _L. cerasiforme_ in some botanical works, and considered in others (and rightly so, I think[1451]) as belonging to the same species. This variety is wild on the sea-shore of Peru,[1452] at Tarapoto, in Eastern Peru,[1453] and on the frontiers of Mexico and of the United States towards California.[1454] It is sometimes naturalized in clearings near gardens.[1455] It is probably in this manner that its area has extended north and south from Peru. +Avocado+, or +Alligator Pear+—_Persea gratissima_, Gærtner. The avocado pear is one of the most highly prized of tropical fruits. It belongs to the order Laurineæ. It is like a pear containing one large stone, as is well shown in Tussac’s illustrations, _Flore des Antilles_, iii. pl. 3, and in the _Botanical Magazine_, pl. 4580. The common names are absurd. The origin of that of _alligator_ is unknown; _avocado_ is a corruption of the Mexican _ahuaca_, or _aguacate_. The botanical name _Persea_ has nothing to do with the _persea_ of the Greeks, which was a _Cordia_. Clusius,[1456] writing in 1601, says that the avocado pear is an American fruit tree introduced into a garden in Spain; but as it is widely spread in the colonies of the old world, and has here and there become almost wild,[1457] it is possible to make mistakes as to its origin. This tree did not exist in the gardens of British India at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It had been introduced into the Sunda Isles[1458] in the middle of the eighteenth century, and in 1750 into Mauritius and Bourbon.[1459] In America its actual area in a wild state is of uncommon extent. The species has been found in forests, on the banks of rivers, and on the sea-shore from Mexico and the West Indies as far as the Amazon.[1460] It has not always occupied this vast region. P. Browne says distinctly that the avocado pear was introduced from the Continent into Jamaica, and Jacquin held the same opinion as regards the West India Islands generally.[1461] Piso and Marcgraf do not mention it for Brazil, and Martius gives no Brazilian name. At the time of the discovery of America, the species was certainly wild and cultivated in Mexico, according to Hernandez. Acosta[1462] says it was cultivated in Peru under the name of _palto_, which was that of a people of the eastern part of Peru, among whom it was abundant.[1463] I find no proof that it was wild upon the Peruvian littoral. +Papaw+—_Carica Papaya_, Linnæus; _Papaya vulgaris_, de Candolle.