492 CULTURE OF THE MELON. 



On Forcing the Plum, Apricot, Gooseberry, and other Fruit Trees 

 and Fruit Shrubs. 



In Germany, and more especially in Eussia, it is customary to force 

 all our hardy fruit trees and fruit shrubs, including even the currant 

 and raspberry. The plants are invariably kept in pots ; and, when the 

 fruit is ripe, the pot with the entire plant is placed on the dessert- 

 table. The forcing is generally carried on in the same house with 

 various culinary vegetables, and being ripened without the natural 

 quantity of light and air, it is, as far as we have tasted it, when in 

 these countries in 1813 and 1814, without much flavour. Plums and 

 apricots are occasionally forced in Britain ; they are planted in pots, 

 and placed in pits, or in any forcing-house where there is room. The 

 temperature and treatment of a cool peach-house, it will readily be 

 conceived, is most suitable for them. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

 CULTURE OF THE MELON, STRAWBERRY, ETC. 



THE melon (Cucumis Melo, L.) is an herbaceous trailing or climb- 

 ing annual, indigenous or cultivated in great part of the warmer dis- 

 tricts of Asia or Africa from time immemorial. In the warmer parts 

 of Europe, it has been cultivated at least from the time of the Romans. 

 The melon is extensively cultivated in Armenia, Ispahan, and Bokhara, 

 and very generally in Greece, Italy, and other Mediterranean regions. 

 It succeeds in the open air as far as 43 N. ; and its culture extends 

 within the tropics, but only when it is abundantly supplied with 

 moisture. Its extremes of temperature may be 70 and 80 for atmo- 

 spheric heat, and from 75 to 90 for the soil. ^ The atmosphere in 

 the countries where the melon is most successfully cultivated is so 

 dry that the plants depend almost entirely on surface irrigation and 

 on dews. The soil in which the melon is found to thrive best is a 

 fresh loam, rather strong than light, such as may be obtained from an 

 alluvial meadow which is flooded during the winter season. In 

 Persia, pigeon's dung is used ; and in Britain stable dung, thoroughly 

 rotted, is sometimes mixed with the soil ; but it is not desirable to 

 introduce rank manure to such an extent as to produce the same 

 degree of luxuriance in the shoots which might be desirable under a 

 tropical sun. The melon in this country requires all the light which 

 it can receive, and therefore the plants must have their shoots trained 

 close under the glass, for which purpose a trellis is found superior to 

 the surface of the soil ; for unless this is the case, and abundance of 

 air is admitted, the fruit produced will be of very inferior flavour. 



