+Chick-Pea+—_Cicer arietinum_, Linnæus. Fifteen species of the genus _Cicer_ are known, all of Western Asia or Greece, except one, which is Abyssinian. It seems, therefore, most probable that the cultivated species comes from the tract of land lying between Greece and the Himalayas, vaguely termed the East. The species has not been found undoubtedly wild. All the floras of the south of Europe, of Egypt, and of Western Asia as far as the Caucasus and India, give it as a cultivated species, or growing in fields and cultivated grounds. It has sometimes[1617] been indicated in the Crimea, and to the north, and especially to the south of the Caucasus, as nearly wild; but well-informed modern authors do not think so.[1618] This quasi-wildness can only point to its origin in Armenia and the neighbouring countries. The cultivation and the names of the species may perhaps throw some light on the question. The Greeks cultivated this species of pea as early as Homer’s time, under the name of _erebinthos_,[1619] and also of _krios_,[1620] from the resemblance of the pea to the head of a ram. The Latins called it _cicer_, which is the origin of all the modern names in the south of Europe. The name exists also among the Albanians, descendants of the Pelasgians, under the form _kikere_.[1621] The existence of such widely different names shows that the plant was very early known, and perhaps indigenous, in the south-east of Europe. The chick-pea has not been found in the lake-dwellings of Switzerland, Savoy, and Italy. In the first-named locality its absence is not singular; the climate is not hot enough. A common name among the peoples of the south of the Caucasus and of the Caspian Sea is, in Georgian, _nachuda_; in Turkish and Armenian, _nachius_, _nachunt_; in Persian, _nochot_.[1622] Philologists can tell if this is a very ancient name, and if it has any connection with the Sanskrit _chennuka_. The chick-pea is so frequently cultivated in Egypt from the earliest times of the Christian era,[1623] that it is supposed to have been also known to the ancient Egyptians. There is no proof to be found in the drawings or stores of grain in their monuments, but it may be supposed that this pea, like the bean and the lentil, was considered common or unclean. Reynier[1624] thought that the _ketsech_, mentioned by Isaiah in the Old Testament, was perhaps the chick-pea; but this name is generally attributed, though without certainty, to _Nigella sativa_ or _Vicia sativa_.[1625] As the Arabs have a totally different name for the chick-pea, _omnos, homos_, which recurs in the Kabyl language as _hammez_,[1626] it is not likely that the _ketsech_ of the Jews was the same plant. These details lead me to suspect that the species was unknown to the ancient Egyptians and to the Hebrews. It was perhaps introduced among them from Greece or Italy towards the beginning of our era.