certain by microscopic investigation that a stick taken from a sarcophagus was made from the wood of the carob tree.[1697] There is no known Hebrew name for the species, which is not mentioned in the Old Testament. The New Testament speaks of it by the Greek name in the parable of the prodigal son. It is a tradition of the Christians in the East that St. John Baptist fed upon the fruit of the carob in the desert, and hence came the names given to it in the Middle Ages—_bread of St. John_, and _Johannis brodbaum_. Evidently this tree became important at the beginning of the Christian era, and it spread, especially through the agency of the Arabs, towards the West. If it had previously existed in Algeria, among the Berbers, and in Spain, older names would have persisted, and the species would probably have been introduced into the Canaries by the Phœnicians. The information gained on the subject may be summed up as follows:— The carob grew wild in the Levant, probably on the southern coast of Anatolia and in Syria, perhaps also in Cyrenaica. Its cultivation began within historic time. The Greeks diffused it in Greece and Italy; but it was afterwards more highly esteemed by the Arabs, who propagated it as far as Marocco and Spain. In all these countries the tree has become naturalized here and there in a less productive form, which it is needful to graft to obtain good fruit. The carob has not been found in the tufa and quaternary deposits of Southern Europe. It is the only one of its kind in the genus _Ceratonia_, which is somewhat exceptional among the _Leguminosæ_, especially in Europe. Nothing shows that it existed in the ancient tertiary or quaternary flora of the south-west of Europe. +Common Haricot Kidney Bean+—_Phaseolus vulgaris_, Savi. When, in 1855, I wished to investigate the origin of the genera _Phaseolus_ and _Dolichos_,[1698] the distinction of species was so little defined, and the floras of tropical countries so rare, that I was obliged to leave several questions on one side. Now, thanks to the works of Bentham and Georg von Martens,[1699] completing the previous labours of Savi,[1700] the _Leguminæ_ of hot countries are better known; lastly, the seeds discovered quite recently in the Peruvian tombs of Ancon, examined by Wittmack, have completely modified the question of origin. I will speak first of the common haricot bean, afterwards of some other species, without, however, enumerating all those which are cultivated, for several of these are still ill defined.