WATER-MELONS. 275 



Indus and that of the Ganges, there are many places 

 where the surface, with the exception of here and 

 there a crumbling stone, is nothing but sand ; there 

 is no water, except what has to be drawn from the 

 depth of several hundred feet, and the rainy monsoon 

 sometimes passes over without refreshing the sur- 

 face with one drop of water. Yet even there the 

 water-melons, planted in the dry sand, not only 

 vegetate, but attain to a size unknown in the most 

 fertile places of Syria and Egypt. The diameter is 

 often from a foot to a foot and a half, and the crops 

 are very abundant. 



WATER-MELON IN THE DESERT OF AJMERE. 



But though we sometimes find a plant thus 

 flourishing in the desert, and collecting cooling juice 

 in abundance where, to our observation, there is 

 nothing but dry air and burning sand, it is not in 

 such places that we are to seek the characteristics 

 of tropical vegetation. As little is it in the fields and 

 meadows ; for, in one sense of the word, fields or 

 meadows there are none. If the grasses are in the 



