WATER-MELONS. 293 



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 character- 

 istics 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 marsh, they resemble reeds, or 

 even forests ; and if they are in dry places they 

 disappear for the greater part of the dry season, 

 unless they are preserved by artificial watering. 

 So that, in them there is little beauty. But the 

 woods are truly splendid. Not merely the palms, 

 though many of them are gigantic, and almost all 

 c c 3 



