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PEPO. 
This Latin word appears in Pliny, about 79 A. D., where he 
says cucumeres when they obtain excessive size are called pepones. 
In the Roman writers on husbandry the word does not occur. 
In the 3rd century, Apicius Coelius, a writer on cookery, gives 
like directions for preparing pepones and melones for eating, i. €., 
raw, with spices, as does Parkinson in 1629, for the melon, “with 
salt and pepper (and good store of wine).” In the goth century 
Walafridus Strabo, in his Hortulus, speaks of the fepo as a round 
juicy fruit of delicious taste, but his poetry is too discursive to 
quote. In the 8th century Charlemagne names fefonas among 
the vegetables ordered to be cultivated on his estates, but there 
is no context, yet as the pepo in the 9th century was a melon, 
we may believe Jefonas to be melons. In the 13th century 
Albertus Magnus describes his pepo as a synonym of melo, and _ 
as a fruit in whose cavity the seeds float without order. The pepo 
of Vergelius, 1532, isa melon. In 1536 Ruellius says the fepo 
and melopepo differ but in form and size, the large melons being 
pepones, or pompons in the vernacular French, the round melons 
melopepones. In 1539 Stephanus gives pompon and peponam as 
the French vernacular for fefo, the melon, and describes a fruit 
whose flesh is softer, smother, and more insipid than the me/o- 
pepo: a remark that would discriminate to-day between our long 
yellow muskmelon and round nutmeg melon. The pepo of 
Dorstenius, 1540, is a melon, as also of Roslin, 1550, Lonicerus, 
1557, Mizaldus, 1560 and 1565, and Scaliger, 1566. 
In 1554 Dodonzus calls three forms of the pumpkin: pepones 
magni, pepones rotundi, pepones lati. Yet the ‘Melon and 
Pepon” of Caesalpinus, 1583, is the melon. 
PEPON. 
A Greek word used as an adjective, signifying ripe, by Hero- 
dotus, 443 B.C., Hippocrates, 430 B.C., Xenophon, gor B. C., 
Theophrastus, 322 B. C. and Galen, 164 A. D., and apparently by 
Galen for the melon. The fepon of Scaliger in his commentaries 
on Aristotle and Theophrastus, is a melon. Homer calls the 
Achaeans fefones, weaklings: i.e. soft and tender. According 
to Porta, 1592, ‘ Phanias says fepones are eaten when the seed is — 
