The Pompkin.
Pepo.
A very large and straggling plant, cultivated by our poor people. The stalks are very long and thick, but they lie upon the ground; they are angulated and rough. The leaves are extremely large, and of a roundish figure, but cornered and angulated, and they are of a deep green colour, and rough to the touch. The flowers are very large, and yellow, of a bell like shape, but angulated at the mouth, and the fruit is of the melon kind, only bigger and round; of a deep green when unripe but yellow at last: in this, under the fleshy part, are contained many large flat seeds.
The poor people mix the fleshy part of the fruit with apples, and bake them in pies. The seeds are excellent in medicine; they are cooling and diuretic; the best way of taking them is in emulsions, made with barley water. They make an emulsion as milky as almonds, and are preferable to them, and all the cold seeds, in stranguries and heat of urine.
