I IO 
For heat and thirjl in Fcavers. 
It is often given to thofe lick of Feavers, and other hot 
Difeafes with good fuccefs. 
[58] Nczu- England Day/ie, or Primrofe, is the fecond 
kind of Navel Wort in John/on upon Gerard; it flowers 
in May, and grows amongit 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 pcpo, L. (Gr. ttettuv ; Low Dutch, pepoen, pompoen ; Fr., pompone), 
is our English pompion, 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., /. 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.). 
