The cucumber, cultivated in India for at least three thousand years, was only introduced into China in the second century before Christ, when the ambassador Chang-kien returned from Bactriana.[1307] The species spread more rapidly towards the West. The ancient Greeks cultivated the cucumber under the name of _sikuos_,[1308] which remains as _si-kua_ in the modern language. The modern Greeks have also the name _aggouria_, from an ancient Aryan root which is sometimes applied to the water-melon, and which recurs for the cucumber in the Bohemian _agurka_, the German _Gurke_, etc. The Albanians (Pelasgians?) have quite a different name, _kratsavets_,[1309] which we recognize in the Slav _Krastavak_. The Latins called the cucumber _cucumis_. These different names show the antiquity of the species in Europe. There is even an Esthonian name, _uggurits_, _ukkurits_, _urits_.[1310] It does not seem to be Finnish, but to belong to the same Aryan root as _aggouria_. If the cucumber came into Europe before the Aryans, there would perhaps be some name peculiar to the Basque language, or seeds would have been found in the lake-dwellings of Switzerland and Savoy; but this is not the case. The peoples in the neighbourhood of the Caucasus have names quite different to the Greek; in Tartar _kiar_, in Kalmuck _chaja_, in Armenian _karan_.[1311] The name _chiar_ exists also in Arabic for a variety of the cucumber.[1312] This is, therefore, a Turanian name anterior to the Sanskrit, whereby its culture in Western Asia would be more than three thousand years old. It is often said that the cucumber is the _kischschuim_, one of the fruits of Egypt regretted by the Israelites in the desert.[1313] However, I do not find any Arabic name among the three given by Forskal which can be connected with this, and hitherto no trace has been found of the presence of the cucumber in ancient Egypt. +West Indian Gherkin+—_Cucumis Anguria_, Linnæus. This small species of cucumber is designated in the _Bon Jardinier_ under the name of the cucumber _Arada_. The fruit, of the size of an egg, is very prickly. It is eaten cooked or pickled. As the plant is very productive, it is largely cultivated in the American colonies. Descourtilz and Sir Joseph Hooker have published good coloured illustrations of it, and M. Cogniaux a plate with a detailed analysis of the flower.[1314]