According to the floras, it is evidently wild in dry places, beyond the limits of cultivation in Spain and Italy.[510] It is also wild in Lower Egypt, according to Schweinfurth and Ascherson;[511] but there is no trace of ancient cultivation in this country or among the Hebrews. Towards the East its wild character becomes less certain. Boissier indicates the plant “in cultivated ground from Turkey in Europe, and Egypt as far as the south of the Caucasus and Babylon.”[512] It is not mentioned in India either as wild or cultivated, and has no Sanskrit name.[513] The species is probably a native of the region comprised between Spain and Greece, perhaps also of Algeria,[514] and diffused by a cultivation, not of very ancient date, over Western Asia. +Chickling Vetch+—_Lathyrus sativus_, Linnæus. An annual leguminous plant, cultivated in the South of Europe, from a very early age, as fodder, and also for the seeds. The Greeks called it _lathyros_[515] and the Latins _cicercula_.[516] It is also cultivated in the temperate regions of Western Asia, and even in the north of India;[517] but it has no Hebrew[518] nor Sanskrit name,[519] which argues a not very ancient cultivation in these regions. Nearly all the floras of the south of Europe and of Algeria give the plant as cultivated and half-wild, rarely and only in a few localities as truly wild. It is easy to understand the difficulty of recognizing the wild character of a species often mixed with cereals, and which persists and spreads itself after cultivation. Heldreich does not allow that it is indigenous in Greece.[520] This is a strong presumption that in the rest of Europe and in Algeria the plant has escaped from cultivation. It is probable that this was not the case in Western Asia; for authors cite sufficiently wild localities, where agriculture plays a less considerable part than in Europe. Ledebour,[521] for instance, mentions specimens gathered in the desert, near the Caspian Sea, and in the province of Lenkoran. Meyer[522] confirms the assertion with respect to Lenkoran. Baker, in his flora of British India, after indicating the species as scattered here and there in the northern provinces, adds, “often cultivated,” whence it may be inferred that he considers it as indigenous, at least in the north. Boissier asserts nothing with regard to the localities in Persia which he mentions in his Oriental flora.[523] To sum up, I think it probable that the species was indigenous before cultivation in the region extending from the south of the Caucasus, or of the Caspian Sea, to the north of India, and that it spread towards Europe in the track of ancient cultivation, mixed perhaps with cereals. +Ochrus+—_Pisum ochrus_, Linnæus; _Lathyrus ochrus_, de Candolle.