V. CRESS, CUCUMBER. 



indeed, a weed, and can be of no real use where lettuces 

 are to be had. It bears abundance of seed, and a little 

 of it may be had by sowing in April, if any one should 

 have the strange curiosity. 



144. CRESS is excellent in salads, with lettuces. It 

 is a peppery little thing, far preferable to mustard or 

 rape. It is an annual, and bears prodigious quantities*of 

 seed. A small quantity should, in the salad season, be 

 sowed every six days or thereabouts j for, it should be 

 cut before it come into rough leaf. It is sowed in little 

 drills made with the tops of the fingers, and covered 

 slightly with very fine earth : it is up almost immediately, 

 and quite fit to cut in five or six days. This and other 

 small salads may be very conveniently raised, in the 

 winter time, in any hot-bed that you happen to have. 



145. CUCUMBER, The instructions relative to the 

 raising of cucumbers naturally divide themselves into two 

 sets j one applicable to the raising of cucumbers in hot- 

 beds, and the other to the raising of cucumbers in the 

 natural ground, or with some little portion of artificial 

 heat. I shall first speak of the former ; for, the produce 

 of this plant is a very great favourite 5 it is a general de- 

 sire to have it early j and it is unquestionably true that 

 the flavour of the cucumber is never so delicate, and the 

 smell never so refreshing as when it is raised in a hot- 

 bed, or, at least, by the means of some artificial heat. To 

 do this, however, at so early a season as to have cucum- 

 bers fit to cut in March, requires great attention, some 

 expense, but particularly great attention. I shall, there- 

 fore, endeavour to give directions for the doing of this, in 



