304 STURTEVANT S NOTES ON EDIBLE PLANTS 



melone and pepone by Castor Durante,' 1617, and by Gerarde* in England, 1597. 

 Melons and pompions are used synonymously, and the melon is called mtiske-melon or 

 million. 



Whether the ancients knew the melon is a matter of doubt. Dioscorides,' in the first 

 century, says the flesh or pulp {cara) of the pepo used in food is diuretic. Pliny,* about 

 the same period, says a new form of cucumber has lately appeared in Campania called 

 melopepo, which grows on the ground in a round form, and he adds, as a remarkable cir- 

 cumstance, in addition to their color and odor, that when ripe, although not suspended, 

 yet the fruit separates from the stem at maturity. Galen,' in the second century, treating 

 of medicinal properties, says the autimm fruits {i. e., ripe) do not excite vomiting as do 

 the vmripe, and further says mankind abstains from the inner flesh of the pepo, where the 

 seed is borne but eats it in the melopepo. A half-century later, Palladius * gives directions 

 for planting melones and speaks of them as being sweet and odorous. Apicius,' a writer 

 on cookery, about 230 A. D., directs that pepones and melones be served with various 

 spices corresponding in part to present customs, and Nonnius, an author of the sixth century, 

 speaks of cucumbers which are odoriferous.' In the seventh century, Paulus Agineta,* 

 a medical writer, mentions the medicinal properties of the melopepo as being of the same 

 character but less than that of the pepo, and separates these from the cucurbita and cucumis, 

 not differing from Galen, already quoted. 



From these remarks concerning odor and sweetness, which particularly apply to our 

 melon, and the mention of the spontaneous falling of the ripe fruit, a characteristic of 

 no other garden vegetable, we are inclined to believe that these references are to the melon, 

 and more especially so as the authors of the sixteenth and following centuries make mention 

 of many varieties, as Amatus Lusitanus,"* 1554, who says, quorum varietas ingens est, and 

 proceeds to mention some as thin skinned, others as thicker skinned, some red fleshed, 

 others white. 



In 1259, Tch'ang Te, according to Bretschneidei," found melons, grapes and pome- 

 granates of excellent qiiality in Turkestan. This Chinese traveller may have brought 

 seeds to China, where Loureiro '^ states the melons are of poor quality and whence 

 they did not spread, for Rumphius '' asserts that melons were carried into the islands of 

 the Asiatic Archipelago by the Portuguese. Smith," however, in his Materia Medica of 



' Durante, C. Herb. 345. 1617. 

 ' Gerarde, J. Herft. 770, 775. 1597. 



Dioscorides Fecge/tMi d. 210. 1532. 



* Pliny lib. 19, c. 23. 



' Galen De Aliment, lib. 2; Gregorius Ed. 97. 1547. 



' Palladius lib. 4, c. 9; lib. 5, c. 3; lib. 6, c. 15. 



' Apicius Opion. 82. 1709. 



' Nonnius Quoted from Lister in Apulius, /. c. 



' Agineta, P. Pharm. Simp. ^6. 1531. 



>" Dioscorides Amatus Lusitanus Ed. 265. 1554. 



" Schuyler rrHjton 1:399. 1876. 



" De Candolle, A. Geog. 5o/. 3:907. 1855. 



" Ibid. 



"Smith, P.P. Conirib. Mat. Med. ChtTia 80. 1871. 



