196 CUCURBITACEOUS PLANTS. 



and it is superior for table use to many of the garden 

 squashes. The facility with which it hybridizes or mixes 

 with other kinds renders it extremely difficult to keep the 

 variety pure ; the tendency being to increase in size, to grow 

 longer or deeper, and to become warty ; either of which 

 conditions may be considered an infallible evidence of de- 

 terioration. 



Varieties sometimes occur more or less marbled and spotted 

 with green ; the green, however, often changing to yellow 

 after harvesting. 



SNAKE OR SERPENT CUCUMBER. 



Cucumis flexuosus. 



Though generally considered as a species of cucumber, this 

 plant should properly be classed with the melons. In its 

 manner of growth, foliage, flowering, and in the odor and 

 taste of the ripened fruit, it strongly resembles the musk- 

 melon. The fruit is slender and flexuous ; frequently meas- 

 ures more than three feet in length ; and is often gracefully 

 coiled or folded in a serpent-like form. The skin is green ; 

 the flesh, while the fruit is forming, is greenish- white, at 

 maturity, yellow ; the seeds are yellowish-white, oval, flat- 

 tened, often twisted or contorted like those of some varieties 

 of melons, and retain their vitality five years. 



Planting and Cultivation. The seeds should be planted 

 in May, in hills six feet apart. Cover half an inch deep, 

 and allow three plants to a hill. 



Use. The fruit is sometimes pickled in the manner of 

 the Common Cucumber, but is seldom served at table sliced 

 in its crude state. It is generally cultivated on account 

 of its serpent-like form, rather than for its value as an 

 esculent. 



Well-grown specimens are quite attractive ; and, as curi- 



