24 
middle at 34 feet distance. Sometimes the bed is made in a 
moderate trench, 12 or 15 inches deep, in some good soil in the 
kitchen-garden, in order to have the excavated earth of the 
trench ready at hand for moulding the bed. When the earth 
under the glasses is warm, proceed to put in the plants, remov- 
ing them from the nursery-bed, with as much earth as will 
adhere about the roots. If you have any plants in small pots, 
turn them out with the ball entire, and plant 3 plants under each 
glass. Give a light watering; put down the glasses, and shade 
the plants from the sun, till they have taken root, after which 
let them enjoy the sun and light fully, only covering the glasses 
and bed every night with mats till June, or commencement of 
warm weather. Admit air every mild day, by propping up the 
southward side of the glasses 1 or 2 inches; moderate waterings 
will be necessary twice a-week or oftener. As the plants push 
runners of considerable length, train them regularly. When 
extended to the limits of the glasses, and when the weather is 
settled warm, about the beginning or middle of June, they 
should be raised upon 8 props 2 or 3 inches high, and the runners 
trained out in regular order, but cover them on cold nights with 
mats, for the first week or two. Continue the glasses, and cir- 
cumspectly water in dry weather, as may be necessary; the 
plants will produce fruit in June, July, August, &c. in plentiful 
succession. To obtain a crop from hot-bed ridges, under hand- 
glasses, you may, in default of plants raised in a previous nur- 
sery-bed for transplanting, sow seed under the glasses in April 
or May, inserting several seeds in the central part under each 
glass. When the plants have been up a few days ora week, 
thin them to 3 or 4 of the strongest in each patch, managing 
them afterwards as the others. They will come into bearing 
towards the end of June or July, and thence to September. 
(Should there be a scarcity of dung to make a regular bed,) 
in the last week of April, or in May, you may dig circular holes 
2 feet wide, a spade deep, and 4 or 5 feet asunder ; fill them 
with hot dung, trodden down moderately firm, and earthed over 
6 inches. In these put either plants or seed, and place on the 
glasses ; the plants will produce fruit in June or July till Sep- 
tember. (In default of hand-glasses,) make a hot-bed, or holes 
of dung, as above, in May; put in plants or seed, and defend 
with oiled paper frames, to remain constantly, day and night, 
till settled warm weather in June or July. Give the additional 
protection of mats over the paper frame in cold nights and bad 
weather. In the culture of all the crops, give proper supplies 
of water in dry warm weather, 2 or 8 times a-week, or every 
day in the hottest season of June, July, and August. In the 
hot-bed ridges, made above ground in April or May, if in 3 or 
4 weeks or more after making, the heat be much declined, and 
the nights or general season remain cold, let a moderate lining 
of hot dung be applied to the sides, which will both throw in a 
reviving heat, and widen the bed for the roots and runners of the 
plants to extend.” 
Cultivation of the cucumber in a flued pit.—Nicol says, ‘ Those 
who would have cucumbers on the table at Christmas (a thing 
sometimes attempted), will find it more practicable, and less 
troublesome, if the plants be grown in a flued pit, in the manner 
of late melons, than if they be grown in a common hot-bed. 
In this case the cucumbers should take place of the melons 
planted in this compartment in July, and which will, by the 
middle or end of the month, have ripened off all their fruit of 
any consequence. The seeds of some of the early sorts (those 
best for early being also best for late) should be sown in small 
pots about the first of the month, and should be placed in the 
pit along with the melons, or under a hand-glass, on a slow dung 
heat; where let the plants be nursed, and be prepared for plant- 
ing about the second or third week in the month, as hinted at 
above. Observe to sow old seeds, not those saved this season, 
CUCURBITACE#. 
IV. Cucumis. 
which would run more to vine than to fruit. Let the pit be 
prepared for their reception, by trenching up the bark or dung, 
and by adding fresh materials, in so far as to produce a mo- 
derate growing heat; observing the directions given for pre- 
paring the pit for the melons in July, and moulding it (however 
with proper cucumber earth) all over to the depth of a foot or 
14 inches. The plants may be placed closer in planting them 
out than is necessary in a spring hot-bed. They may be planted 
at the distance of a yard from each other, and 2 rows lengthwise 
in the pit, as they will not grow very vigorously at this late 
season. They should be moderately supplied with water once 
in 4or 5 days, and should always be watered over the foliage, 
the more especially when strong fire-heat becomes necessary, as 
cucumbers naturally like a moist rather than a dry heat. The 
temperature should be kept up to about 64° or 65° in the night, 
by the aid of the flues, and by matting, or otherwise covering 
the pit. Air should be as freely admitted as the state of the 
weather will allow, and so as to keep the mercury down, in sun- 
shine to about 70°. The plants will require little other pruning 
than to stop the vines, as they show fruit at the joint or two 
above it; for they will not push many superfluous shoots. Ob- 
serve to pick off all damped leaves as they appear; and other- 
wise carefully attend to them, as above directed, while they 
continue to flourish, or to do any good worthy of such attend- 
ance.” 
Cultivation of the cucumber in M‘Phail’s brick-bed pit.— 
“ When I used,” observes M‘Phail, “ to cultivate cucumbers on 
a dung-bed, the fruit were sometimes watery and ill-tasted ; but 
after I began to cultivate them on a brick bed, the fruit were 
constantly firm and well-flavoured, which is certainly occasioned 
by the goodness and wholesomeness of the food with which the 
plants are fed or nourished.” M‘Phail’s pit has many advantages 
over a common hot-bed : there is no chance of burning the roots 
of the plants in it, the linings being placed all on the outside, 
without any dung underneath the plants. ‘ All the materials of 
my newly-invented bed are clean and sweet ; and the flues being 
made perfectly close, no tainted or bad-smelling air can get 
through them into the bed ; so that it is of little or no concern 
whether the dung of the linings be sweet or otherwise, or whe- 
ther the linings be made of dung or of any thing else, provided 
there be a sufficient heat kept in them, and no pernicious steam 
be drawn in among the plants by the current of air.” A shel- 
tered dry situation is of the first consequence for this pit. The 
bed being built, ‘ when the frame is about to be set uponit, 4 
layer of mortar is spread all round upon the upper course of 
brick-work, on which the bottoms of the frames are to rest. 
Thus the frames are set in mortar on the bricks ; and the flues 
are, with a bricklayer’s brush, well washed, and rubbed with a 
thick grout, made of lime and water, which stops every crack. 
or hole, and prevents the steam of the linings from getting into 
the frames. This washing of the flues I had done once a-year, 
for no crack or hole must ever be suffered to remain unstopped 
in the flues. I found little or no trouble in keeping the flues 
perfectly close, nor is it indeed likely that they should become 
troublesome, if the bed stands on a sound foundation, for the 
heat of the dung has not that powerful effect on the flues, 28 
fire-heat has on the flues of the hot-house ; because the heat of 
dung is more steady and not so violent as the heat of the fire, 
and, besides, the flues of a cucumber-bed are almost always M 
a moist state, which is a preventive in them against craeking 
or rending. When the bed is first built, the pits are about 3 
feet in depth below the surface of the flues. The pits I had 
filled up about a foot high, some of them with rough chalk, 
some of them with small stones, and some of them with brick- 
bats; this is to let the wet drain off freely from the mould 
the beds. After this filling up with chalk, stones, and broken | 
