ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 333 



Club " (1876), with the comment that : " Cela nous apprend 

 seulement que les indigenes, un siecle apres la decouverte 

 de la Virginie, 20 a 40 ans apres la colonisation par W. 

 Raleigh, faisaient usage de certains fruit de Cucurbitacees." 

 Nevertheless CucurUta Pepo, upon botanical indications 

 solely, is attributed to temperate North America in the gen- 

 eral table, to a Mexican or Texan origin in the body of the 

 work. This rests upon the collection by Lindheimer, in 

 Texas, of a form of this species "apparently indigenous." 

 That was between thirty and forty years ago ; no wild speci- 

 men has since been received from all that region (nor from 

 any other) ; and it is wellnigh certain that the species was 

 commonly cultivated in all that country by the aborigines. 

 If ever found truly indigenous, it will probably be farther 

 south than Texas. C. maxima is now set down as from 

 Guinea, on the strength of a single finding of it " apparently 

 indigenous " on the banks of the Niger. (7. ^noscliata (to 

 which Vilmorin refers the Canada Crook-neck Squash) is in 

 the list of species of completely unknown or imcertain origin. 



In this state of the case, it is certainly worth while to pre- 

 sent the evidence — gathered with much care and pains — 

 which assures us that one or two, and perhaps all three, of 

 these species, and many varieties, were largely cultivated 

 throughout America, from the tropics to Canada, before the 

 voyages of Columbus. 



Allusion has already been made (under Lagenaria) to the 

 difficulty of distinguishing the genera of CuciirUtacem under 

 the names by which they are mentioned by voyagers and 

 explorers of the first century after the discovery of America ; 

 and the question of species is particularly difficult. Yet we 

 find abundant evidence — especially as respects North America 

 — (1) that, in various parts of the country remote from each 

 other, the cultivation of one or more species of Cucurbits by 

 the Indians was established before those places are known to 

 have been visited by Europeans; (2) that these species or 

 varieties were novel to Europeans, and were regarded by bot- 

 anists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as well as by 

 the voyagers and first colonists, as natives or denizens of the 



