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removed, but cucumbers are eaten whole. Speusippus calls the 
gourd pepon. We note sikuos pepon and pepon used inter- 
changeably in Aristotle, the s¢kvos being eaten unripe and the 
pepon when ripe. The word is said to be derived from esso, to 
soften, to ripen. 
Pepons was an English name for pumpkins as. given by Lyte, | 
1578 and 1586, also Lobel, 1591. The French pepom was used 
for the melon by Lonicerus, 1557, as already noted: the Italian 
pepon by Camerarius, 1586. In 1786 Duchesne gives pepon as 
the French equivalent for Cucurbita Pepo, as does Naudin in 
recent times, and fefon is at present a modern Spanish name for 
the watermelon. These remarks should come rather under 
pepo, as being derived more probably from the Latin than from 
the Greek. 
According to Soreisel the pepon of Theophrastus and the 
eteros pepon of Hippocrates is the watermelon, the Szkuos pepon 
of Hippocrates the melon, and the jpefonx of Dioscorides the 
_ pumpkin, but in this latter case he certainly is in error. 
MELOPEPO. 
This Latin word first appears in Pliny, about 79 A. D., in lib. 
XIX, c. 23, where he says ‘a new form of cucumer has lately been 
produced in Campania, ressembling a quince [in smell ?]. These 
are called melopepones. They are not pendant, but they are 
round as they lie on the ground. They are remarkable, in 
addition to their shape, color and smell, that when ripe they ° 
separate spontaneously from the stalk.’ The modern Christiana 
melon fulfils all the conditions of this description. 
The melopepo of Brunfelsius and Ruellius, 1536, Stephanus, 
1539 and Dorstenius, 1540, is the melon. In 1550 it was used 
for the pumpkin by Eucharius Roslin, and for the summer squash 
by later writers. 
MELOPEPON. 
A Greek word which does not seem to be synonymous with 
the Latin melopepo. NHeyschius, a Greek lexicographer of un- 
certain date, called the melopepon, sikuos spermapas or seeding 
- cucumbers, as usually translated, as also does Athenzus about 
200 AA. D. Galen, about 164 A. D., says the interior flesh of the 
