_C. olitorius_ is more used as a vegetable than for its fibres. Out of Asia it is employed exclusively for the leaves. It is one of the commonest of culinary plants among the modern Egyptians and Syrians, who call it in Arabic _melokych_, but it is not likely that they had any knowledge of it in ancient times, as we know of no Hebrew name.[632] The present inhabitants of Crete cultivate it under the name of _mouchlia_,[633] evidently derived from the Arabic, and the ancient Greeks were not acquainted with it. According to several authors[634] this species of Corchorus is wild in several provinces of British India. Thwaites says it is common in the hot districts of Ceylon; but in Java, Blume only mentions it as growing among rubbish (_in ruderatis_). I cannot find it mentioned in Cochin-China or Japan. Boissier saw specimens from Mesopotamia, Afghanistan, Syria, and Anatolia, but gives as a general indication, “culta, et in ruderatis subspontanea.” No Sanskrit name for the two cultivated species of Corchorus is known.[635] Touching the indigenous character of the plant in Africa, Masters, in Oliver’s _Flora of Tropical Africa_ (i. p. 262), says, “wild, or cultivated as a vegetable throughout tropical Africa.” He attributes to the same species two plants from Guinea which G. Don had described as different, and as to whose wild nature he probably knew nothing. I have a specimen from Kordofan gathered by Kotschy, No. 45, “on the borders of the fields of sorghum.” Peters, as far as I know, is the only author who asserts that the plant is wild. He found _C. olitorius_ “in dry places, and also in the meadows in the neighbourhood of Sena and Tette.” Schweinfurth only gives it as a cultivated plant in the whole Nile Valley.[636] This is also the case in the flora of Senegambia by Guillemin, Perrottet, and Richard. To sum up, _C. olitorius_ seems to be wild in the moderately warm regions of Western India, of Kordofan, and probably of some intermediate countries. It must have spread from the coast of Timor, and as far as Northern Australia, into Africa and towards Anatolia, in the wake of a cultivation not perhaps of earlier date than the Christian era, even at its origin. In spite of the assertions made in various works, the cultivation of this plant is rarely indicated in America. I note, however, on Grisebach’s authority,[637] that it has become naturalized in Jamaica from gardens, as often happens in the case of cultivated annuals. +Sumach.+—_Rhus coriaria._