GOURDS 37 1 



and level, and shallow circular hollows are formed with the 

 hand, a foot wide, and half an inch deep in the middle. 

 The distance between each hollow is three feet and a half, 

 and the distance between the rows five or six feet. Eight 

 or ten seeds are deposited in each cavity. This is done in 

 the beginning of June. When the plants appear, they are 

 thinned out to three or four, the weakest or least healthy 

 being rejected. They are watered occasionally, according 

 to the state of the weather. The cucumbers are not ex 

 pected nor wished to attain a large size ; they are gathered 

 chiefly from the middle to the end of August. Vast 

 quantities of these open-ground girkins are taken to tho 

 London market. The village of Sandy, in Bedfordshire, 

 has been known to furnish 10,000 bushels of drilled cucum 

 bers in one week, Cucumbers may be procured in a hot 

 house during the winter months. For this purpose the 

 seedlings are not raised till the month of August, and they 

 are prevented from expending their energies in the produc 

 tion of blossom or fruit till they have been introduced into 

 the stove. Their stems are then firm, and, as Mr. Knight 

 remarks, the plants possess within themselves a quantity of 

 accumulated sap. 



GOURDS, species or varieties of the species of the genus 

 Cucurbita, may be grown like drilled cucumbers, or 

 trained against walls or on pales. Though occasionally 

 used as esculents, they are regarded chiefly as curiosities, 

 the fruit of some kinds being very ornamental. The 

 Succada (deader, Cucurbita ovifera), or vegetable mar 

 row, is a very useful sort, and in request for the table, 

 being eaten stewed with white sauce or mashed like turnips. 

 It may be raised in an exhausted melon-frame or pit ; or it 

 may be sown under a hand-glass, and afterwards trans- 



