Kæmpfer[1664] formerly published an excellent illustration of the soy bean, and it had existed for a century in European botanical gardens, when more extensive information about China and Japan excited about ten years ago a lively desire to introduce it into our countries. In Austria, Hungary, and France especially, attempts have been made on a large scale, of which the results have been summed up in works worthy of consultation.[1665] It is to be hoped these efforts may be successful; but we must not digress from the aim of our researches, the probable origin of the species. Linnæus says, in his _Species_, “habitat in India,” and refers to Kæmpfer, who speaks of the plant in Japan, and to his own flora of Ceylon, where he gives the plant as _cultivated_. Thwaites’s modern flora of Ceylon makes no mention of it. We must evidently go further east to find the origin both of the species and of its cultivation. Loureiro says that it grows in Cochin-China and that it is often cultivated in China.[1666] I find no proof that it is wild in the latter country, but it may perhaps be discovered, as its culture is so ancient. Russian botanists[1667] have only found it cultivated in the north of China and in the basin of the river Amur. It is certainly wild in Japan.[1668] Junghuhn[1669] found it in Java on Mount Gunung-Gamping, and a plant sent also from Java by Zollinger is supposed to belong to this species, but it is not certain that the specimen was wild.[1670] A Malay name, _kadelee_,[1671] a quite different to the Japanese and Chinese common names, is in favour of its indigenous character in Java. Known facts and historical and philological probabilities tend to show that the species was wild from Cochin-China to the south of Japan and to Java when the ancient inhabitants of this region began to cultivate it at a very remote period, to use it for food in various ways, and to obtain from it varieties of which the number is remarkable, especially in Japan. +Pigeon-Pea+—_Cajanus indicus_, Sprengel; _Cytisus Cajan_, Linnæus. This leguminous plant, often grown in tropical countries, is a shrub, but it fruits in the first year, and in some countries it is grown as an annual. Its seed is an important article of the food of the negroes and natives, but the European colonists do not care for it unless cooked green like our garden-pea. The plant is easily naturalized in poor soil round cultivated plots, even in the West India Islands, where it is not indigenous.[1672] In Mauritius it is called _ambrevade_; in the English colonies, _doll_, _pigeon-pea_; and in the French Antilles, _pois d’Angola_, _pois de Congo_, _pois pigeon_.