Most of these varieties exist in the gardens of the warm and temperate regions of both hemispheres. The origin of the species is considered to be doubtful. I hesitated in 1855[1263] between Southern Asia and the Mediterranean basin. Naudin and Cogniaux[1264] admit Southern Asia as probable, and the botanists of the United States on their side have given reasons for their belief in an American origin. The question requires careful investigation. I shall first seek for those forms now attributed to the species which have been found growing anywhere in a wild state. The variety _Cucurbita ovifera_, Linnæus, was formerly gathered by Lerche, near Astrakhan, but no modern botanist has confirmed this fact, and it is probable it was a cultivated plant. Moreover, Linnæus does not assert it was wild. I have consulted all the Asiatic and African floras without finding the slightest mention of a wild variety. From Arabia, or even from the coast of Guinea to Japan, the species, or the varieties attributed to it, are always said to be cultivated. In India, Roxburgh remarked this, and certainly Clarke, in his recent flora of British India, has good reasons for indicating no locality for it outside cultivation. It is otherwise in America. A variety, _C. texana_,[1265] very near to the variety _ovata_, according to Asa Gray, and which is now unhesitatingly attributed to _C. Pepo_, was found by Lindheimer “on the edges of thickets, in damp woods, on the banks of the upper Guadaloupe, apparently an indigenous plant.” Asa Gray adds, however, that it is perhaps the result of naturalization. However, as several species of the genus _Cucurbita_ grow wild in Mexico and in the south-west of the United States, we are naturally led to consider the collector’s opinion sound. It does not appear that other botanists found this plant in Mexico, or in the United States. It is not mentioned in Hemsley’s _Biologia Centrali-Americana_, nor in Asa Gray’s recent flora of California. Some synonyms or specimens from South America, attributed to _C. Pepo_, appear to me very doubtful. It is impossible to say what Molina[1266] meant by the names _C. Siceratia_ and _C. mammeata_, which appear, moreover, to have been cultivated plants. Two species briefly described in the account of the journey of Spix and Martius (ii. p. 536), and also attributed to _C. Pepo_,[1267] are mentioned among cultivated plants on the banks of the Rio Francisco. Lastly, the specimen of Spruce, 2716, from the river Uaupes, a tributary of the Rio Negro, which Cogniaux[1268] does not mention having seen, and which he first attributed to the _C. Pepo_, and afterwards to the _C. moschata_, was perhaps cultivated or naturalized from cultivation, or by transport, in spite of the paucity of inhabitants in this country. Botanical indications are, therefore, in favour of a Mexican or Texan origin. It remains to be seen if historical records are in agreement with or contrary to this idea.