226 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 



seed ; Date-stones ; crop of red-beet ; & some cress, & 

 white mustard. 



April 6. Made a Cucumber-bed for three Hand-glasses 

 with two dung-carts of Parsons's Dung. The trench 16 

 feet long, two & an half broad, & one & half deep : the 

 dung did not reach to the level of the Ground by some 

 Inches. 



Made a slight Hot-bed for hardy annuals with seven 

 barrows of dung : laid fine earth over it five inches 

 deep. 



Sowed the border against Parsons's Yard with Sun- 

 flowers, Lady-pease, Venetian-mallow, Nasturtium, Lark- 

 spurs, Candytuft. 



10. Sowed in the annual Bed Sunflowers, African 

 Marrigolds, Orange-Gourds, Double-China Aster, Marvel of 

 Peru, Celeriac. 



10. Turn'd-out eight pots of Yellow-seeded Cantaleupes, 

 & two of white into my ten great Lights. The white-seeded 

 under the tiled lights. One pretty good plant under each 

 light. The bed but in indifferent condition by reason of 

 the continual rains, & black cloudy weather. 



April 10. Sowed some Yellow-seeded, & white-seeded 

 Cantaleupes in the old seed- Bed, for fear some plants in 

 the lights should miscarry : some Romania-melon-seeds in 

 D- for y e Hand-glass-ridge. 



Mem. Those melon-plants that were once seized with 

 a mouldiness constantly dy'd away by degrees, 'till they 

 were quite devour'd by it ; except those plants on which 

 I tryed the experiment of clipping-off the infected part with 

 a pair of scissors : when they recover' d, & afterwards grew 

 pretty well. The only method I can find of preventing the 

 earth from falling from the melon-plants in turning them 

 out of their pots, is by plastering-down a cake of wet Clay, 

 over the mouth of the pots. Those pots turn-out best that 

 have two or three plants ; because there are more roots 

 to hold the earth together. No snail ever comes a near a 

 place well sprinkled with quick-lime, especially in a frame 

 where the wet is kept-off. And what is very strange, 



