DEPARTMENT OF HORTICULTQRE. 127 



manv of the earlier varieties are still standard, new ones are 

 rapidlv taking their places. As with other European fruits, 

 conditions have so changed under the new environment in 

 this country that our present cultivated muskmelons are what 

 mav be termed strictly an American product. 



After much correspondence the data at hand seems very 

 inadequate. It was thought that a large number of our vari- 

 eties would be found to be of definite origin, but they are not. 

 Very few varieties are of known parentage ; but instead are 

 largely chance seedlings or strains of well known kinds. 



Much general information was obtained through the two 

 large wholesale seed firms of Chauncey P. Coy & vSon, propri- 

 etors of the Elkhorn Vallev Seed Gardens, and Frank T. 

 Emerson, general manager of the Western Seed and Irriga- 

 tion Company, both of which are at Waterloo, Nebraska. 

 These firms are large growers of muskmelon seeds, and sup- 

 pi}^ them for our principal seed houses. When any of the 

 seed firms have obtained or originated a new variety, they 

 turn the same over to these firms for future supplies. 



The writer is unable to tabulate the data as completely as 

 desirable, but ofiers the following quotations and table toward 

 that end : 



" We have sold three varieties of muskmelons to the houses 

 that first catalogued them. The Banquet muskmelon was 

 found by us in the hands of a gardener, who could give us no 

 information about it save that he had grown it for a good many 

 years, and had first secured his seed from some other farmer 

 or gardener. We could not trace the matter back, and can- 

 not say where or when the variety first appeared. The 

 Green-fleshed Osage came from a variety called the Grand 

 View (which was nothing more or less than an impure strain 

 of Emerald Gem). While inspecting a crop of the Grand 

 View we found a single vine bearing six well dev^eloped 

 melons of an entirely different type; we picked the melons 

 and next season planted the seed, and neither the first season 

 nor at any time since have we found so much as one single 



