HARVESTING AND MARKETING MELONS 49 



tirely to the southern grower either. Human nature 

 is pretty much the same everywhere, but the more 

 northern grower finds his early markets pretty well 

 occupied with melons from more southern districts, 

 so the temptation is not so great in his case; but 

 even here we often find him picking and shipping 

 before the melons are ready in order that he may 

 get a few cents extra in price. All this, of course, 

 has a tendency to depress the market price instead 

 of stimulating it, just as filling the middle of the 



Fig. 11. Harvesting cantaloupes and hauling them to market. 



barrel with small inferior apples tends to demoral- 

 ize the markets ; because, when the buyer tries to 

 eat an unripe melon, he naturally becomes skepti- 

 cal concerning the whole melon business, and turns 

 his attention to some other kind of fruit with which 

 he is more familiar. As a result of this short- 

 sightedness on the part of growers, not one-half as 

 many melons are consumed in our large cities as 

 there would be if the grower would give more at- 

 tention to getting them on to the market at the time 



