The _common annual flax_ has not yet been discovered, with absolute certainty, in a wild state. I possess several specimens of it from India, and Planchon saw others in the herbarium at Kew; but Anglo-Indian botanists do not admit that the plant is indigenous in British India. The recent flora of Sir Joseph Hooker speaks of it as a species cultivated principally for the oil extracted from the seeds; and Mr. C. B. Clarke, formerly director of the botanical gardens in Calcutta, writes to me that the specimens must have been cultivated, its cultivation being very common in winter in the north of India. Boissier[583] mentions _L. humile_, with narrow leaves, which Kotschy gathered “near Schiraz in Persia, at the foot of the mountain called Sabst Buchom.” This is, perhaps, a spot far removed from cultivation; but I cannot give satisfactory information on this head. Hohenacker found _L. usitatissimum_ “half wild” in the province of _Talysch_, to the south of the Caucasus, towards the Caspian Sea.[584] Steven is more positive with regard to Southern Russia.[585] According to him, it “is found pretty often on the barren hills to the south of the Crimea, between Jalta and Nikita; and Nordmann found it on the eastern coast of the Black Sea.” Advancing westward in Southern Russia, or in the region of the Mediterranean, the species is but rarely mentioned, and only as escaped from cultivation, or half wild. In spite of doubts and of the scanty data which we possess, I think it very possible that the annual flax, in one or other of these two forms, may be wild in the district between the south of Persia and the Crimea, at least in a few localities. The _winter flax_ is only known under cultivation in a few provinces of Italy.[586] The _Linum ambiguum_ of Jordan grows on the coast of Provence and of Languedoc in dry places.[587] Lastly, _Linum angustifolium_, which hardly differs from the preceding, has a well-defined and rather large area. It grows wild, especially on hills throughout the region of which the Mediterranean forms the centre; that is, in the Canaries and Madeira, in Marocco,[588] Algeria,[589] and as far as the Cyrenaic;[590] from the south of Europe, as far as England,[591] the Alps, and the Balkan Mountains; and lastly, in Asia from the south of the Caucasus[592] to Lebanon and Palestine.[593] I do not find it mentioned in the Crimea, nor beyond the Caspian Sea. Let us now turn to the cultivation of flax, destined in most instances to furnish a textile substance, often also to yield oil, and cultivated among certain peoples for the nutritious properties of the seed. I first studied the question of its origin in 1855,[594] and with the following result:—