The ancient Greeks and Romans must certainly have known the species, since it is wild in Italy and Greece. Targioni believes it to be the _Scorodon schiston_ of Theophrastus; but we are dealing with words without descriptions, and authors whose specialty is the interpretation of Greek text like Fraas and Lenz, are prudent enough to affirm nothing. If the ancient names are doubtful, the fact of the cultivation of the plant at this epoch is yet more so. It is possible that the custom of gathering it in the fields existed. +Colocasia+—_Arum esculentum_, Linnæus; _Colocasia antiquorum_, Schott.[264] This species is cultivated in the damp districts of the tropics, for the swelled lower portion of the stem, which forms an edible rhizome similar to the subterraneous part of the iris. The petioles and the young leaves are also utilized as a vegetable. Since the different forms of the species have been properly classed, and since we have possessed more certain information about the floras of the south of Asia, we cannot doubt that this plant is wild in India, as Roxburgh[265] formerly, and Wight[266] and others have more recently asserted; likewise in Ceylon,[267] Sumatra,[268] and several islands of the Malay Archipelago.[269] Chinese books make no mention of it before a work of the year 100 B.C.[270] The first European navigators saw it cultivated in Japan and as far as the north of New Zealand,[271] in consequence probably of an early introduction, and without the certain co-existence of wild stocks. When portions of the stem or of the tuber are thrown away by the side of streams, they naturalize themselves easily. This was perhaps the case in Japan and the Fiji Islands,[272] judging from the localities indicated. The colocasia is cultivated here and there in the West Indies, and elsewhere in tropical America, but much less than in Asia or Africa, and without the least indication of an American origin. In the countries where the species is wild there are common names, sometimes very ancient, totally different from each other, which confirms their local origin. Thus the Sanskrit name is _kuchoo_, which persists in modern Hindu languages—in Bengali, for instance.[273] In Ceylon the wild plant is styled _gahala_, the cultivated plant _kandalla_.[274] The Malay names are _kelady_,[275] _tallus_, _tallas_, _tales_, or _taloes_,[276] from which perhaps comes the well-known name of the Otahitans and New Zealanders—_tallo_ or _tarro_,[277] _dalo_[278] in the Fiji Islands. The Japanese have a totally distinct name, _imo_,[279] which shows an existence of long duration either indigenous or cultivated.