STURTEVANT S NOTES ON EDIBLE PLANTS 221 



III- 



Cucurbita calebasse. Toum. 7.36. 1719. 

 Courge siphon. Vilm. 190. 1883. 

 Dipper Gourd. 



IV. 

 Cucurbita major. Fuch. 368. 1542. 

 Cucurbita cameraria. Roeszl. 115. 1550. 

 Cucurbita. Trag. 824. 1552; Matth. 261. 1558. 

 Cucurbit^ cameraria major. Dalechamp 1:616. 1587. 

 Cucurbita lagenaria. Ger. 777. 1597. 

 Cucurbita major sessilis. Matth. 393. 1598. 

 Cucurbita lagenaria rotunda. Bodaeus 784. 1644. 



Cucurbita latior, folio molli, flore albo. Bauh. J. 1:215. 1651; Chabr. 129. 1673. 

 Sugar Trough Gourd. 



V. 

 Cucurbita. Matth. 261. 1558; Dalechamp 1:615. 1587- 

 Courge plate de corse. Vilm. 191. 1883. 



This classification, it is to be remarked, is not intended for exact synonymy but to 

 represent the like types of fruit-form. Within these classes there is a wide variation in 

 size and proportion. 



Whether the lagenaria gourds existed in the New World before the discovery by 

 Columbus, as great an investigator as Gray ^ considers worthy of examination, and 

 quoted Oviedo for the period about 1526 as noting the long and round or banded and 

 all the other shapes they usually have in Spain, as being much used in the West Indies 

 and the mainland for carrying water. He indicates that there are varieties of spontaneous 

 growth as well as those under cultivation. The occurrence, however, of the so-called 

 fancy gotords of Cucurbita pepo, of hard rind, of gourd shape, and often of gourd bitter- 

 ness, render difficult the identification of species through the uses. The Relation of the 

 Voyage of Amerigo Vespucci,^ 1489, mentions the Indians of Trinidad and of the coast 

 of Paris as carrying about their necks small, dried gourds filled with the plant they are 

 accustomed to chew, or with a certain whitish flour; but this record could as well have 

 been made from the Cucurbita pepo gourds as from the lagenaria gourds. The further men- 

 tion that each woman carried a cucurbita containing water might seem to refer to gourds. 



Acosta ' speaks of the Indians of Peru making floats of gourds, for swimming, and 

 says, " there are a thousand kinds of Calebasses; some are so deformed in their bigness 

 that of the rind cut in the midst and cleansed, they make as it were, baskets to put in all 

 their meat, for their dinner; of the lesser, they make vessels to eat and drinlc in." 

 Bodaeus' * quotation in Latin, reads differently in a free translation: " They grow in 

 the province of Chile to a wonderful size, and are called capallas. They are of an indefinite 

 number of kinds; some are monstrous in their immense size, and when cut open and cleaned, 

 furnish various vessels. Of the smaller they most ingeniously make cups and saucers." In 



' Gray and Trumbull Amer. Journ. Set. 370. 1883. 



' Ibid. 



' Acosta Nat. Hist. Ind. 177, 238. 1604. Grimestone Ed. 



* Theophrastus Hist. PI. Bodaeus Ed. 784. 1644. 



