742 The American Naturalist. [August, 
Cucurbita cameraria major. Lugd., 1587, I., 616. 
Cucurbita lagenaria. Ger., 1597, 777. 
Cucurbita major sessilis. Matth., 1598, 393. 
Cucurbita lagenaria rotunda. Bodaeus, 1644, 784. 
Cucurbita latior, folio molli, fore albo. J. Bauh., 1651, L, 215; 
Chabr., 1673, 129. 
Sugar Trough Gourd. - 
V. Cucurbita. Matth., 1558, 261; Lugd., 1587, L, 615. 
Courge plate de corse. Vilm., 1883, 19r. 3 
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 propor- 
tion. . 
Whether these lagenaria existed in the new world before the 
discovery by Columbus, as great an investigator as Gray  con- 
siders as worthy of examination, and quotes Oviedo for the 
period about 1526, as noting the long and round or banded, and 
of all the shapes they usually have in Spain, as much used in the 
West Indies and Terra Firma for carrying water, and indicates 
that there are varieties of spontaneous growth as well as those 
under cultivation. The occurrence, however, of the so-called 
fancy gourds of the Cucurbita pepo species, of hard rind, of 
gourd shape, and often of gourd bitterness, renders 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 Paria as carrying about their necks 
small dried gourds filled with the plant they are accustomed to 
chew, or with a certain whitish flour; but these records might as 
well be made from the Cucurbita pepo gourds as from the 
lagenaria gourds. The further mention that each woman carried 
a cucurbita of water might seem to refer to gourds. Acosta’ 
speaks of the Indians of Peru making floats of gourds, for 
swimming, and says: “ There area thousand kinds of Calebasses ; 
some are so deformed in their bigness that of the rind cut in the 
181 Gray and Trumbull. Am. Jour. of Sci., May, 1883, 370. 
33$ Quoted from Gray and Trumbull, 1. c. 
139 Acosta. Hist. of Indies, Eng. Ed., 1604, 177, 238. 
