IV 
IATION UNDER DOMESTICATION 
87 
Variations of Apples and of Melons. 
The most remarkable varieties are afforded by the apple 
and the melon, and some account of these will be given as 
illustrating the effects of slight variations accumulated by 
selection. All our apples are known to have descended from 
the common crab of our hedges (Pyrus malus), and from this 
at least a thousand distinct varieties have been produced. 
These differ greatly in the size and form of the fruit, in its 
colour, and in the texture of the skin. They further differ in 
the time of ripening, in their flavour, and in their keeping 
properties; but apple trees also differ in many other ways. 
The foliage of the different varieties can often be distinguished 
by peculiarities of form and colour, and it varies considerably 
in the time of its appearance; in some hardly a leaf appears 
till the tree is in full bloom, while others produce their leaves 
so early as almost to hide the flowers. The flowers differ in 
size and colour, and in one case in structure also, that of the 
St. Valery apple having a double calyx with ten divisions, and 
fourteen styles with oblique stigmas, but without stamens or 
corolla. The flowers, therefore, have to be fertilised with the 
pollen from other varieties in order to produce fruit. The 
pips or seeds differ also in shape, size, and colour; some 
varieties are liable to canker more than others, while the 
Winter Majetin and one or two others have the strange con¬ 
stitutional peculiarity of never being attacked by the mealy 
bug even when all the other trees in the same orchard are in¬ 
fested with it. 
All the cucumbers and gourds vary immensely, but the 
melon (Cucumis melo) exceeds them all. A French botanist, 
M. Naudin, devoted six years to their study. He found that 
previous botanists had described thirty distinct species, as they 
thought, which were really only varieties of melons. They 
differ chiefly in their fruits, but also very much in foliage and 
mode of growth. Some melons are only as large as small 
plums, others weigh as much as sixty-six pounds. One variety 
has a scarlet fruit. Another is not more than an inch in 
diameter, but sometimes more than a yard in length, twisting 
about in all directions like a serpent. Some melons are 
exactly like cucumbers; and an Algerian variety, when ripe, 
