The plant called _jurumu_ by the Brazilians, figured by Piso and Marcgraf[1259] is attributed by modern writers to _Cucurbita maxima_. The drawing and the short account by the two authors agree pretty well with this theory, but it seems to have been a cultivated plant. It may have been brought from Europe or from Africa by Europeans, between the discovery of Brazil in 1504, and the travels of the above-named authors in 1637 and 1638. No one has found the species wild in North or South America. I cannot find in works on Brazil, Guiana, or the West Indies any sign of an ancient cultivation or of wild growth, either from names, or from traditions or more or less distinct belief. In the United States those men of science who best know the languages and customs of the natives, Dr. Harris for instance, and more recently Trumbull,[1260] maintain that the _Cucurbitaceæ_ called _squash_ by the Anglo-Americans, and _macock_, or _cashaw_, _cushaw_, by early travellers in Virginia, are _pumpkins_. Trumbull says that _squash_ is an Indian word. I have no reason to doubt the assertion, but neither the ablest linguists, nor the travellers of the seventeenth century, who saw the natives provided with fruits which they called _gourds and pumpkins_, have been able to prove that they were such and such species recognized as distinct by modern botanists. All that we learn from this is that the natives a century after the discovery of Virginia, and twenty to forty years after its colonization by Sir Walter Raleigh, made use of some fruits of the _Cucurbitaceæ_. The common names are still so confused in the United States, that Dr. Asa Gray, in 1868, gives _pumpkin_ and _squash_ as answering to different species of _Cucurbita_,[1261] while Darlington[1262] attributes the name _pumpkin_ to the common _Cucurbita Pepo_, and that of _squash_ to the varieties of the latter which correspond to the forms of _Melopepo_ of early botanists. They attribute no distinct common name to _Cucurbita maxima_. Finally, without placing implicit faith in the indigenous character of the plant on the banks of the Niger, based upon the assertion of a single traveller, I still believe that the species is a native of the old world, and introduced into America by Europeans.