DeCandolle’s Origin of Cultivated Plants. 371 
lus. Harly voyagers to America wrote cucurbita, calabaga, 
courge or zucca, as a name for any ‘gourd’ or pumpkin, an 
occasionally for a ‘calabash’ which was not even a cucurbit. 
The relation of the first voyage of Columbus repeatedly men- 
tions the calabazas used by the natives of St. Domingo and 
other islands for carrying water (Navarrete, Ovilec. i, 
188), and, Dec. 3, 1492, Columbus saw, near the east end of 
Cuba, fields planted with calabazas and other productions of the 
country (7d. p. 225). Yet we know from Peter Martyr that 
some of the gourds (“cucurbite ”) used in the islands grew on 
4; pp. 88, 246). This tree, Crescentia crete, is described by 
Oviedo (Hist. gén., lib. viii, c. 4) under its Hayti 
— 
re) 
S 
= 
9 
5 
BS 
rr 
B 
& 
Ty 
1526. Oviedo (Hist. gen. y Nat, lib. vii, c 8) observes that 
the same kinds (de las mismas), long and round, or banded 
(efiidas), and of all the shapes they usually have [in Spain].” 
Islands and the Main,” and “are one of the common things 
that the Indians cultivate in their gardens.” They were not 
caltivated for food— for they do not eat them ’—but for car- 
Ying water; “‘aud they have other ca/abagas, that are in all 
o 
for) 
taste; and there are many of these that grow of themselves, 
without cultivation.”+ The same author (lib. xi, e. 1) in a list 
of plants introduced from Spain, names melons and cucumbers 
he relation of the voyage of Amerigo Vespucci, 1489, in a 
description of the Indians of Trinidad and the coast of Paria, 
“ays that ‘‘each carried, hanging at his neck, two small dried 
gourds (cucurbitas), one containing the plant that they were 
Xecustomed to chew, the other, a certain whitish flour,” ete., 
~ Not _Cujete—unless j has the German sound. The Tupi name is formed from 
oo Lery) ‘the shell’ or hard rind of a nut or fruit (and the ‘ bowl’ or cala- 
| made from it) and efé ‘good, precious.’ : : 
lan DeCandolle, p. 198, citing this passage from Ramusio’s Italian translation 
_ ®t Oviedo’s Historia Natural, etc., has “zucche” for “calabacas” of the Spanish 
ee Mginal, and takes no notice of what is said of their spontaneous growth, 
