The specific names confirm the impression of its origin in the east rather than in the west of Europe; thus the name _chren_[55] in Russia recurs in all the Sclavonic languages, _krenai_ in Lithuanian, _chren_ in Illyrian,[56] etc. It has introduced itself into a few German dialects, round Vienna,[57] for instance, where it persists, in spite of the spread of the German tongue. We owe to it also the French names _cran_ or _cranson_. The word used in Germany, _Meerretig_, and in Holland, _meer-radys_, whence the Italian Swiss dialect has taken the name _méridi_, or _mérédi_, means sea-radish, and is not primitive like the word _chren_. It comes probably from the fact that the plant grows well near the sea, a circumstance common to many of the _Cruciferæ_, and which should be the case with this species, for it is wild in the east of Russia where there is a good deal of salt soil. The Swedish name _peppar-rot_[58] suggests the idea that the species came into Sweden later than the introduction of pepper by commerce into the north of Europe. However, the name may have taken the place of an older one, which has remained unknown to us. The English name of horse-radish is not of such an original nature as to lead to a belief in the existence of the species in the country before the Saxon conquest. It means a very strong radish. The Welsh name _rhuddygl maurth_[59] is only the translation of the English word, whence we may infer that the Kelts of Great Britain had no special name, and were not acquainted with the species. In the west of France, the name _raifort_, which is the commonest, merely means strong root. Formerly it bore in France the names of German, or Capuchin mustard, which shows a foreign and recent origin. On the contrary, the word _chren_ is in all the Sclavonic languages, a word which has penetrated into some German and French dialects under the forms of _kreen_, _cran_, and _cranson_, and which is certainly of a primitive nature, and shows the antiquity of the species in temperate Eastern Europe. It is therefore most probable that cultivation has propagated and naturalized the plant westward from the east for about a thousand years. +Turnips+—_Brassica species et varietates radice in crassata._