214 OTJE, COMMON FBtTITS. 



the wealthy. Now, however, as Grlenny in a recent work 

 deplores, " it is rarelfco see any quantity grown ; and the 

 foreign melons, though unfit to eat, seem to usurp at the 

 market the places of their betters, at a price that would 

 scarcely pay an English grower for cutting them and 

 bringing them to market, even if they cost nothing to 

 grow;" for the facilities afforded by steam communication 

 have caused a large supply to be imported from abroad, 

 chiefly from Spain and Portugal, where they can be grown 

 in the open air, and also from Holland, where large quanti- 

 ties are raised by artificial means for the London market. 

 The general public being thus provided for, home-grown 

 melons, though much preferred to imported ones when 

 available, are seldom enjoyed except by the rich employ- 

 ers of highly-paid skilful gardeners; for the authority just 

 quoted adds further, that the melon " is not worth forcing 

 by those who have but small means, as it has many chances 

 against it." 



A native of warmer climates, and provided by Nature 

 with a rind of such thickness that only extreme heat can 

 penetrate to ripen the pulp within, when grown in this 

 country it needs, in addition to the artificial heat applied 

 by the cultivator, as much as our summer sunshine can 

 supply of a more genial kind of glow, and therefore is 

 seldom obtained before May or after October ; though 

 modern improvements in greenhouses, and the intro- 

 duction of thinner-skinned varieties, have somewhat ex- 

 tended their season, and in time will probably still further 

 lengthen it. Occasionally grown from cuttings, as a surer 

 method of securing an unchanged perpetuation of the 

 parent plant, the usual mode of propagation is by seeds, 

 which are tested, like witches of old, by being thrown into 

 water, when floating on the surface ensures the condem- 

 nation of a mejon-seed as certainly as it once did that of 

 an old woman. i Age, too, has much to do with the choice 

 of them, for, unlike most other seeds, perfect freshness is 

 so far from being a desideratum that it is not until they are 

 two years old that they are considered fit for sowing, ^ince 

 seed in which the exuberant vitality has not l>een checked 

 and enfeebled by age would give birth to plants too luxu- 



