The origin of the water-melon was long mistaken or unknown. According to Linnæus, it was a native of Southern Italy.[1286] This assertion was taken from Matthiole, without observing that this author says it was a cultivated species. Seringe,[1287] in 1828, supposed it came from India and Africa, but he gives no proof. I believed it came from Southern Asia, because of its very general cultivation in this region. It was not known in a wild state. At length it was found indigenous in tropical Africa, on both sides of the equator, which settles the question.[1288] Livingstone[1289] saw districts literally covered with it, and the savages and several kinds of wild animals eagerly devoured the wild fruit. They are sometimes, but not always, bitter, and this cannot be detected from the appearance of the fruit. The negroes strike it with an axe, and taste the juice to see whether it is good or bad. This diversity in the wild plant, growing in the same climate and in the same soil, is calculated to show the small value of such a character in cultivated Cucurbitaceæ. For the rest, the frequent bitterness of the water-melon is not at all extraordinary, as the most nearly allied species is Citrullus Colocynthis. Naudin obtained fertile hybrids from crossing the bitter water-melon, wild at the Cape, with a cultivated species which confirms the specific unity suggested by the outward appearance.
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.
The original country of Cucumis sativus was unknown to Linnæus and Lamarck. In 1805, Wildenow[1303] asserted it was indigenous in Tartary and India, but without furnishing any proof. Later botanists have not confirmed the assertion. When I went into the question in 1855, the species had not been anywhere found wild. For various reasons deduced from its ancient culture in Asia and in Europe, and especially from the existence of a Sanskrit name, soukasa,[1304] I said, “Its original habitat is probably the north-west of India, for instance Cabul, or some adjacent country. Everything seems to show that it will one day be discovered in these regions which are as yet but little known.”
This conjecture has been realized if we admit, with the best-informed modern authors, that Cucumis Hardwickii, Royle, possesses the characteristics of Cucumis sativus. A coloured illustration of this cucumber found at the foot of the Himalayas may be seen in Royle’s Illustrations of Himalayan Plants, p. 220, pl. 47. The stems, leaves, and flowers are exactly those of C. sativus. The fruit, smooth and elliptical, has a bitter taste; but there are similar forms of the cultivated cucumber, and we know that in other species of the same family, the water-melon, for instance, the pulp is sweet or bitter. Sir Joseph Hooker, after describing the remarkable variety which he calls the Sikkim cucumber,[1305] adds that the variety Hardwickii, wild from Kumaon to Sikkim, and of which he has gathered specimens, does not differ more from the cultivated plant than certain varieties of the latter differ from others; and Cogniaux, after seeing the plants in the herbarium at Kew, adopts this opinion.[1306]
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 sikua 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.