2i6 sturtevant's notes on edible plants 



French: pompons, Ruel. 1536; pepon, Dod. Gal. issQ. 



Italian: popone, Don. 1834. 



Swedish: pumpa, Tengborg 1764; pompa, Webst. Diet. 



In English, the words " melon " and " million " were early applied to the pumpkin, 

 as by Lyte 1586, Gerarde 1597 and 1633, and by a number of the early narrators of voy, 

 ages of discovery. Pumpkins were called gourds by Lobel, 1586, and by Gerarde, 1597, 

 and the word gourd is at present in use in England to embrace the whole class and is 

 equivalent to the French courge. In France, the word courge is given by Matthiolus, 1558, 

 and Pinaeus, 1561, and seems to have been used as applicable to the pimipkin by early 

 navigators, as by Cartier, 1535. The word courge was also applicable to the lagenarias 

 1536, 1561, 1586, 1587, 1597, 1598, 1617, 1651, 1673 and 1772, and was shared with the 

 pumpkin and squash in 1883. 



Our earliest travelers and historians often recognized in the pumpkin a different 

 fruit from vhe courge, .the gourd, or the melon. Cartier, on the St. Lawrence, 1584, dis- 

 criminates by using the words " gros melons, concombres and courges " ' or in a translation 

 " pompions, gourds, cucumbers." ^ In 1586, a French name for what appears to be the 

 svimmer squash is given by Lyte as concombre marin. With this class, we may interpret 

 Cartier's names into gros melons, pumpkins, concombres, stmimer sqtaashes, and courge, 

 winter crooknecks, as the shape and hard shell of this variety would suggest the gourd 

 or lagenaria. In 1586, Hariot, in Virginia,' says: " Macoks were, according to their 

 several forms, called by us pompions, melons and goiu-ds, because they are of the like 

 forms as those kinds in England. In Virginia, such of several forms are of one taste, 

 and very good, and so also spring from one seed. They are of two sorts: one is ripe in 

 the space of a month, and the other in two months." Hariot, apparently, confuses all 

 the forms with the macock, which, as we have shown in our notes on squashes, appears 

 identical with the type of the Perfect Gem squash, or the Cucumis marinus of Fuchsius. 

 The larger sorts may be his pompions, the round ones his melons, and the cushaw type 

 his gourds; for, as we shall observe, the use of the word pompion seems to include size, 

 and that of gourd, a hard rind. Acosta,* indeed, speaks of the Indian pompions in treating 

 of the large-sized fruits. Capt. John Smith, ^ in his Virginia, separates his ptmipions 

 and macocks, both planted by the Indians amongst their com and in his description of 

 New England, 1614, speaks of " pumpions and gourds." This would seem to indicate 

 that he had a distinction in mind, and we may infer that the word pompion was used for 

 the like productions of the two localities and that the word gourd in New England referred 

 to the hard-rind or winter squashes; for. Master Graves ' refers to Indian pompions. Rev. 

 Francis Higginson ' to pompions, and Wood * to pompions and isquouter-squashes in 



' Cartier Bref. Recit. 1545. Reimpr. Tross. 1863. 

 ' Pinkerton CoW. 7031.12:656. 1812. 



Pinkerton CoK. Foy. 12:596. 1 812. 



Acosta Nat. Mor. Hist. Ind. 264. 1604. 

 ' Pinlcerton CoW. Foy. 12:33. 1812. 



Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll. 1:118, 124. 1806. Reprint of 1792. 

 ' Ibid. 



' Wood, W. New Eng. Prosp. 15. 1865. 



