Holland's translation, book xix, c.5

The word cucumis used in the original of this passage embraces many of
the cucurbitaceae, but the context shows that here means the cucumber.

The physical revolutions thus wrought by man have not indeed all been
destructive to human interests, and the heaviest blows he has inflicted
upon nature have not been wholly without their compensations. Soils to
which no nutritious vegetable was indigenous, countries which once
brought forth but the fewest products suited for the sustenance and
comfort of man--while the severity of their climates created and
stimulated the greatest number and the most imperious urgency of
physical wants--surfaces the most rugged and intractable, and least
blessed with natural facilities of communication, have been brought in
modern times to yield and distribute all that supplies the material
necessities, all that contributes to the sensuous enjoyments and
conveniences of civilized life. The Scythia, the Thule, the Britain, the
Germany, and the Gaul which the Roman writers describe in such
forbidding terms, have been brought almost to rival the native
luxuriance and easily won plenty of Southern Italy; and, while the
fountains of oil and wine that refreshed old Greece and Syria and
Northern Africa have almost ceased to flow, and the soils of those fair
lands are turned to thirsty and inhospitable deserts, the hyperborean
regions of Europe have learnod to conquer, or rather compensate, the
rigors of climate, and have attained to a material wealth and variety of
product that, with all their natural advantages, the granaries of the
ancient world can hardly be said to have enjoyed.