The vernacular names also prove an ancient existence north and west of the Alps, and on the borders of Europe towards Tartary and the Caucasus. The most widely diffused of these names is indicated by the Latin _avena_, Ancient Slav _ovisu_, _ovesu_, _ovsa_, Russian _ovesu_, Lithuanian _awiza_, Lettonian _ausas_, Ostias _abis_.[1885] The English word _oats_ comes, according to A. Pictet, from the Anglo-Saxon _ata_ or _ate_. The Basque name, _olba_ or _oloa_,[1886] argues a very ancient Iberian cultivation. The Keltic names are quite different:[1887] Irish _coirce_, _cuirce_, _corca_, Armorican _kerch_. Tartar _sulu_, Georgian _kari_, Hungarian _zab_, Croat _zob_, Esthonian _kaer_, and others are mentioned by Nemnich[1888] as applying to the generic name oats, but it is not likely that names so varied do not belong to a cultivated species. It is strange that there should be an independent Berber name _zekkoum_,[1889] as there is nothing to show that the species was anciently cultivated in Africa. All these facts show how erroneous is the opinion which reigned in the last century,[1890] that oats were brought originally from the island of Juan Fernandez, a belief which came apparently from an assertion of the navigator Anson.[1891] It is evidently not in the Austral hemisphere that we must seek for the home of the species, but in those countries of the northern hemisphere where it was anciently cultivated. Oats sow themselves on rubbish-heaps, by the wayside, and near cultivated ground more easily than other cereals, and sometimes persist in such a way as to appear wild. This has been observed in widely separate places, as Algeria and Japan, Paris and the north of China.[1892] Instances of this nature render us sceptical as to the wild nature of the oats which Bové said he found in the desert of Sinai. It has also been said[1893] that the traveller Olivier saw oats wild in Persia, but he does not mention the fact in his work. Besides, several annual species nearly resembling oats may deceive the traveller. I cannot discover either in books or herbaria the existence of really wild oats either in Europe or Asia, and Bentham has assured me that there are no such specimens in the herbarium at Kew; but certainly the half-wild or naturalized condition is more frequent in the Austrian states from Dalmatia to Transylvania[1894] than elsewhere. This is an indication of origin which may be added to the historical and philological arguments in favour of eastern temperate Europe.