no $lcfo=(S5ttt$lantig 9ft antics. 



For heat and thirjl in Feavers. 



It is often given to thofe lick of Feavers, and other hot 

 Difeafes with good fuccefs. 



[58] New-England Dayjie, or Primrq/e, is the fecond 

 kind of Navel Wort in John/on upon Gerard; it flowers 

 in May, and grows amongft Mofs upon hilly Grounds and 

 Rocks that are fhady. 1 



to the countrie. The flesh of it is of a flesh-colour; a rare cooler of feavers, and 

 excellent against the stone." The water-melon (Cucurbita citrullus, L.) is " the 

 only medicine the common people use in ardent fevers," in Egypt (Loudon, /. c). 

 Cucurbita pepo, L. (Gr. irimw ; Low Dutch, fiepoen, pompoen ; Fr., pompone), 

 is our English pompiori, or pumpkin. At p. 91, Josselyn speaks of pompions 

 " proper to the country." Compare Gerard's chapter " of melons, or pompions" 

 (Johnson's Gerard, p. 918), where are two Virginian sorts; and see "the ancient 

 New-England standing dish," at p. 91 of this book. The evidence appears to be 

 sufficient, that our savages had in cultivation, together with their corn and tobac- 

 co, — and, like these, derived originally from tropical regions, — several sorts of 

 what we call squashes, some kinds of pompion, and also water-melons ; and, 

 Graves's letter (New-England Plantation, /. c, p. 124) adds, musk-melons. See 

 further, especially, Champlain (Voy. de la Nouv. France, passim) and L'Escarbot 

 (Hist, de la Nouv. France, vol. ii. p. 836). Mr. A. De Candolle (Geogr. Bot., 

 vol. ii. pp. 899, 904) disputes the American origin of the edible gourds, but does 

 not appear to have examined all the early authorities for their cultivation by the 

 savages before the settlement of this country. Such cultivation appears to be 

 made out, and to indicate that these vegetables have probably been known, from 

 very remote antiquity, in the warmer parts of America. But this does not touch 

 the difficult question of origin ; and it may still appear that the gourds are equally 

 ancient in Europe, and derived, both here and there, from Asia (De Cand., 1. c.) ; 

 such derivation being explainable, in the case of America, by old migrations from 

 Asia through Polynesia. — Pickering; Races of Man, chap. 17. 



1 Johnson's Gerard, p. 528; where the same plant is also called "jagged or 

 rose penniwoort," and is probably what our author intends at p. 43 of this. It 

 was no doubt our pretty Saxifraga Virginiensis, Michx., which Josselyn had in 

 view. In his Voyages, p. 80, he assigns to it the medicinal virtues which Gerard 

 attributes to the great navel-wort, or wall-pennywort {Cotyledon umbilicus, 

 Huds.). 



