Botanical analogies and the testimony of contemporaries agree, as we have seen, in considering this plant to be a native of the north-east of America. Dr. Asa Gray, seeing that it is not found wild, had formerly supposed it to be a variety of _H. doronicoides_ of Lamarck, but he has since abandoned this idea (_American Journal of Science_, 1883, p. 224). An author gives it as wild in the State of Indiana.[98] The French name _topinambour_ comes apparently from some real or supposed Indian name. The English name Jerusalem artichoke is a corruption of the Italian _girasole_, sunflower, combined with an allusion to the artichoke flavour of the root. +Salsify+—_Tragopogon porrifolium_, Linnæus. The salsify was more cultivated a century or two ago than it is now. It is a biennial composite, found wild in Greece, Dalmatia, Italy, and even in Algeria.[99] It frequently escapes from gardens in the west of Europe, and becomes half-naturalized.[100] Commentators[101] give the name _Tragopogon_ (goat’s beard) of Theophrastus sometimes to the modern species, sometimes to _Tragopogon crocifolium_, which also grows in Greece. It is difficult to know if the ancients cultivated the salsify or gathered it wild in the country. In the sixteenth century Olivier de Serres says it was a new culture in his country, the south of France. Our word _Salsifis_ comes from the Italian _Sassefrica_, that which rubs stones, a senseless term. +Scorzonera+—_Scorzonera hispanica_, Linnæus. This plant is sometimes called the Spanish salsify, from its resemblance to _Tragopogon porrifolium_; but its root has a brown skin, whence its botanical name, and the popular name _écorce noire_ in some French provinces. It is wild in Europe, from Spain, where it abounds, the south of France, and Germany, to the region of Caucasus, and perhaps even as far as Siberia, but it is wanting in Sicily and Greece.[102] In several parts of Germany the species is probably naturalized from cultivation. It seems that this plant has only been cultivated within the last hundred or hundred and fifty years. The botanists of the sixteenth century speak of it as a wild species introduced occasionally into botanical gardens. Olivier de Serres does not mention it. It was formerly supposed to be an antidote against the bite of adders, and was sometimes called the viper’s plant. As to the etymology of the name _Scorzonera_, it is so evident, that it is difficult to understand how early writers, even Tournefort,[103] have declared the origin of the word to be _escorso_, viper in Spanish or Catalan. Viper is in Spanish more commonly _vibora_. There exists in Sicily a _Scorzonera deliciosa_, Gussone, whose very sugary root is used in the confection of bonbons and sherbets, at Palermo.[104] How is it that its cultivation has not been tried? It is true that I tasted at Naples _Scorzonera_ ices, and found them detestable, but they were perhaps made of the common species (_Scorzonera hispanica_).