The history and names of this plant may give clearer indications of its origin. It has been cultivated in the East, in the Mediterranean basin and even in Switzerland, from prehistoric time. According to Herodotos, Theophrastus, etc., the ancient Egyptians used it largely. If their monuments give no proof of this, it was probably because the lentil was, like the bean, considered common and coarse. The Old Testament mentions it three times, by the name _adaschum_ or _adaschim_, which must certainly mean lentil, for the Arabic name is _ads_,[1608] or _adas_.[1609] The _red_ colour of Esau’s famous mess of pottage has not been understood by most authors. Reynier,[1610] who had lived in Egypt, confirms the explanation given formerly by Josephus; the lentils were red because they were hulled. It is still the practice in Egypt, says Reynier, to remove the husk or outer skin from the lentil, and in this case they are a pale red. The Berbers have the Semitic name _adès_ for the lentil.[1611] The Greeks cultivated the species—_fakos_ or _fakai_. Aristophanes mentions it as an article of food of the poor.[1612] The Latins called it _lens_, a name whose origin is unknown, which is evidently allied to the ancient Slav _lesha_, Illyrian _lechja_, Lithuanian _lenszic_.[1613] The difference between the Greek and Latin names shows that the species perhaps existed in Greece and Italy before it was cultivated. Another proof of ancient existence in Europe is the discovery of lentils in the lake-dwellings of St. Peter’s Island, Lake of Bienne,[1614] which are of the age of bronze. The species may have been introduced from Italy. According to Theophrastus,[1615] the inhabitants of Bactriana (the modern Bokkara) did not know the _fakos_ of the Greeks. Adolphe Pictet quotes a Persian name, _mangu_ or _margu_, but he does not say whether it is an ancient name, existing, for instance, in the Zend Avesta. He admits several Sanskrit names for the lentil, _masura_, _renuka_, _mangalya_, etc., while Anglo-Indian botanists, Roxburgh and Piddington, knew none.[1616] As these authors mention an analogous name in Hindustani and Bengali, _mussour_, we may suppose that _masura_ signifies lentil, while _mangu_ in Persian recalls the other name _mangalya_. As Roxburgh and Piddington give no name in other Indian languages, it may be supposed that the lentil was not known in this country before the invasion of the Sanskrit-speaking race. Ancient Chinese works do not mention the species; at least, Dr. Bretschneider says nothing of them in his work published in 1870, nor in the more detailed letters which he has since written to me. The lentil appears to have existed in western temperate Asia, in Greece, and in Italy, where its cultivation was first undertaken in very early prehistoric time, when it was introduced into Egypt. Its cultivation appears to have been extended at a less remote epoch, but still hardly in historic time, both east and west, that is into Europe and India.