THE VARIETIES. 191 



is of medium length, averaging a foot or 14 inches when 

 fully mature, smooth and regular. It would probably 

 sell better than the larger sorts in markets which are 

 unaccustomed to the large English varieties. Telegraph 

 (T, Fig. 66) is also a favorite and productive variety, 

 and is probably the most popular one with commercial 

 growers. It is a smooth, slender, and very handsome 

 fruit, ordinarily attaining a length of 18 or 20 inches. 

 English authorities say that this variety is very liable to 

 mixture, but we have never had such experience. Ken- 

 yon (Lord Kenyan's Favorite} is also an excellent 

 smooth, slender sort of medium length. Edinburgh 

 (Duke of Edinburgh] is a spiny and somewhat furrowed 

 variety, attaining a length of 20 to 24 inches (E, Fig. 66). 

 It is not an attractive variety, and we prefer others. 

 Lome (Marquis of Lome) is one of the best of the very 

 large sorts. We have grown a fruit of this 33^ inches 

 long, and it was a perfect specimen. Blue Gown is 

 also an old favorite. 



Very large fruits are less popular than those of me- 

 dium length. They are too large for convenient table 

 use, and they are apt to be inferior in quality to those 

 a foot in length. The flavor of English cucumbers is 

 somewhat different from that of the common field sorts, 

 the texture being, as a rule, somewhat less breaking. 

 But this is not an evidence of poor quality ; it is simply 

 a different quality, and evidently belongs to these fruits 

 as a class. The English sorts retain their green color 

 longer than the field varieties. They are ordinarily 

 picked before they attain their complete growth, al- 

 though they remain edible for some time after they have 

 reached maturity. 



The reader will now be able to understand what the 

 English mean by "prize cucumbers." Specimen fruits 

 are exhibited at the shows, and there are certain cus- 

 tomary scales of points for determining the merits of 

 individual fruits, such as the age of the specimen, the 



