70 
might be eaten green or raw, and particularly of Cucurbits. The 
Indian plural of asg, in the Massachusetts dialect, is asquash, 
Wood, in “New England’s Prospect,” published in 1634, says, 
that “in summer when their corne is spent, Isquouter squashes is 
their best bread, a fruit like a young Pumpion.” 
Roger Williams (1. c.) wrote in 1643: “ Askétasquash, their vine 
apples, which the English from them eall < Squashes,’ about the 
bignesse of apples, of several colours, a sweet, light, wholesome 
refreshing.” 
Eliot, in translating the Bible, puts askootasq, plural askootas- 
quash, for “cucumbers,” in Numbers xi., 5; quonooasg (literally, 
long-asq) for “gourd ;” monaskootasquash, for “ melons,” ete. 
Josselyn (N. E. Rarities, 57) says: “ Sgwashes but more truly 
squontersquashes, a kind of melon, or rather gourd; for they often 
degenerate into gourds. . . . The yellow squash, called an 
apple squash (because like an apple) and about the bigness of a 
pome-water, is the best kind.” 
In England, the name ‘squash’ was understood to be of Amer- 
ican origin. Robert Boyle mentions his experiment with the seed 
of “ squash, which is an Indian kind of pompion that grows apace.” 
(Works, i. 494.) But the name is not found, for any Cucurbit (or 
for any other fruit), in the earlier English herbalists—before 1650, 
It és used by Shakespeare for an immature pea-pod—perhaps_ so 
called because of its emptiness, (i. €. easy to be crushed, or, as we 
sometimes hear in the vulgar dialect of New England, to be squashed; 
a colloquial onomatopeia): or is it from the French cosse, an [empty ] 
pod? The word is not, I think, to be found in any English diction- 
ary before 1700, 
Going South, we find, still earlier, two Virginia Cucurbits, with 
Indian names adopted by the English, and still in use: the Macock 
and the Cushaw (corrupted to “ Kershaw.”) Clusius (Exotie. 1. ii. 
c. 2) describes the “ Macocqwer Virginiensium forte,” from a spe- 
cimen sent him from London in 1591, which James Garet brought 
from “ Wingandecaow Provincia, quam Angli Virginiam nuncu- 
parunt.” This specimen was hard shelled, orbiculate, about four 
inches diameter, the seeds flat and heart shaped. In the edition of 
1605, he mentions the receipt of another specimen, which young 
John de Laet bought of a sailor at Amsterdam. Of the former, he 
says, “ As it is reported to have come from Virginia, I readily pur- 
suade myself that it is the same which the natives of that country 
call Macocqwer,” ete. 
Strachey, in his “ Historie of Travaile into Virginia,” 1610-12, 
describes this species : ‘‘ The macokos is of the form of our pump- 
eons—I must confesse, nothing so good—’tis of a more waterish 
tast.” “The inhabitants,” he adds, “seethe a kind of million, 
which they put into their walnut-milke, and so makea kynd of tooth- 
some meat.” [This was, evidently, the rudimentary pum pkin-pie. ] 
In the Indian vocabulary appended to Strachey’s book, he gives: 
“muhcawg, a pumpeon,” 
Beverley (Hist. of Virginia, 124) describes the Macocks as “a 
sort of a Melopepones, or lesser sort of Pompion or Cashaw . 
*. . 
