The species has not been found wild in Asia. The ancient Egyptians cultivated the water-melon, which is represented in their paintings.[1290] This is one reason for believing that the Israelites knew the species, and called it _abbatitchim_, as is said; but besides the Arabic name, _battich_, _batteca_, evidently derived from the Hebrew, is the modern name for the water-melon. The French name, _pastèque_, comes through the Arabic from the Hebrew. A proof of the antiquity of the plant in the north of Africa is found in the Berber name, _tadelaât_,[1291] which differs too widely from the Arabic name not to have existed before the Conquest. The Spanish names _zandria_, _cindria_, and the Sardinian _sindria_,[1292] which I cannot connect with any others, show also an ancient culture in the eastern part of the Mediterranean basin. Its cultivation early spread into Asia, for there is a Sanskrit name, _chayapula_,[1293] but the Chinese only received the plant in the tenth century of the Christian era. They call it _si-kua_, that is melon of the West.[1294] As the water-melon is an annual, it ripens out of the tropics wherever the summer is sufficiently hot. The modern Greeks cultivate it largely, and call it _carpousia_ or _carpousea_,[1295] but this name does not occur in ancient authors, nor even in the Greek of the decadence and of the Middle Ages.[1296] It is the same as the _karpus_ of the Turks of Constantinople,[1297] which we find again in the Russian _arbus_,[1298] and in Bengali and Hindustani as _tarbuj_, _turbouz_.[1299] Another Constantinople name, mentioned by Forskal, _chimonico_, recurs in Albanian _chimico_.[1300] The absence of an ancient Greek name which can with certainty be attributed to this species, seems to show that it was introduced into the Græco-Roman world about the beginning of the Christian era. The poem _Copa_, attributed to Virgil and Pliny, perhaps mentions it (lib. 19, cap. 5), as Naudin thinks, but it is doubtful. Europeans have introduced the water-melon into America, where it is now cultivated from Chili to the United States. The _jacé_ of the Brazilians, of which Piso and Marcgraf have a drawing, is evidently introduced, for the first-named author says it is cultivated and partly naturalized.[1301] +Cucumber+—_Cucumis sativus_, Linnæus. In spite of the very evident difference between the melon and cucumber, which both belong to the genus _Cucumis_, cultivators suppose that the species may be crossed, and that the quality of the melon is thus sometimes spoilt. Naudin[1302] ascertained by experiments that this fertilization is not possible, and has also shown that the distinction of the two species is well founded.