1890.] History of Garden Vegetables. 743 
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 drink in,” etc. Bodaeus’' quotation, in Latin, reads 
differently in a free translation: “ They grow in the province of 
Chili 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 1624 Bodaeus received from the West Indies some seed which 
bore fruit * quae humanum crassitudinem and longitudanem 
superaret," which fully justifies Acosta’s idea of size. The 
Anonymous Portugal of Brasil!“ says: “Some pompions so big 
that they use them for vessels to carry water, and they hold two 
pecks or more"  Baro'? in 1647 also speaks of “ Courges and 
calebasses si grandes and profondes qu'elles servent comme de 
magazin,” and Laet!? mentions “ Pepones tam vastae, ut Indi- 
genae iis utantur pro vasis quibus aquam aggerunt" These 
large-sized gourds were not, however, confined to America. 
Bodaeus, as we have noted, grew fruits deformed in their bigness, 
to use Acosta's term, from West Indian seed, and Cardanus '* says 
he has seen gourds (for he gives a figure which is a gourd) 
weighing 80 and 122 lbs.; Bauhin ™* records the club gourd as 
sometimes three feet long, Ray !^ as five or six feet long, and 
Forskal! the bottle gourd as 18 inches in diameter. These 
records of size are all, however, of a date following the discovery 
of America, and the seed of these large varieties might have 
come from American sources, as is recorded in one case by 
Bodaeus. 
The gourd is of old world origin, for water-flasks of the 
lagenaria have been found in Egyptian tombs of the twelfth 
49 Bodaeus a Stapel. Theophrastus, 1644, 784. 
Ml Anonymous Portugal of Brasil. Purchas, Lib. 7, c. L, p. 1310, Quoted from 
Sloane's Cat., 1696, 100. i 
14 Baro in Morisot, p. 294. Quoted from Sloane's Cat., 1696, r00. 
43 Laet, Lib. 15, c. ro, p. 566. Quoted from Sloane's Cat., 1696, 100. 
14 Cardanus. De Rerum Varietate, 1556, 222. 
