252 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 



(Mexico and California) ; but these are perennial species, 

 while the cultivated pumpkins are annuals. 



The plant called jurwnu by the Brazilians, figured 

 by Piso and Marcgraf l is attributed by modern writers 

 to Cucurbita maxima. The drawing and the short 

 account by the two authors agree pretty well with this 

 theory, but it seems to have been a cultivated plant. It 

 may have been brought from Europe or from Africa by 

 Europeans, between the discovery of Brazil in 1504, and 

 the travels of the above-named authors in 1637 and 1638. 

 No one has found the species wild in North or South 

 America. I cannot find in works on Brazil, Guiana, or 

 the West Indies any sign of an ancient cultivation or of 

 wild growth, either from names, or from traditions or 

 more or less distinct belief. In the United States those 

 men of science who best know the languages and customs 

 of the natives, Dr. Harris for instance, and more recently 

 Trurnbull, 2 maintain that the Cucurbitacece called squash 

 by the Anglo-Americans, and macock, or cashaw, cushaiu, 

 by early travellers in Virginia, are pumpkins. Trumbull 

 says that squash is an Indian word. I have no reason to 

 doubt the assertion, but neither the ablest linguists, nor 

 the travellers of the seventeenth century, who saw the 

 natives provided with fruits which they called gourds 

 and pumpkins, have been able to prove that they were 

 such and such species recognized as distinct by modern 

 botanists. All that we learn from this is that the natives 

 a century after the discovery of Virginia, and twenty to 

 forty years after its colonization by Sir Walter Raleigh, 

 made use of some fruits of the Cucurbitacece. The com- 

 mon names are still so confused in the United States, 

 that Dr. Asa Gray, in 1868, gives pumpkin and squash 

 as answering to different species of Cucurbita, 3 while 

 Darlington 4 attributes the name pumpkin to the common 

 Cucurbita Pepo, and that of squash to the varieties of the 



1 Piso, Brazil, edit. 1658, p. 264 ; Marcgraf, edit. 1648, p. 44. 



2 Harris, American Journal, 1857, vol. xxiv. p. 4il ; Trumbull, Bull, 

 of Torrey Bot. Club, 1876, vol. vi. p. 69. 



3 Asa Gray, Botany of the Northern States, edit. 1868, p. 186. 



4 Darlington, Flora Cestrica, 1853, p. 94. 



