PISTILLATES AND STAMINATES 29 



year I grew a strange and heterogeneous progeny 

 like oranges, green clubs, flat squashes, and various 

 things — all the visible signs of the work of the 

 busy bee. 



This lesson has long been learned by the seeds- 

 men to such good effect that thej^ are obliged to 

 resort to severe methods to keep pure their strains 

 of seed of squashes, cucumbers, and melons. Some 

 seedsmen enclose with fine wire screens the whole 

 patch of a single variety. Others grow immense 

 fields of one kind in one locality, and, as far as a 

 bee can fly in every direction, they pledge their 

 farmer neighbours to grow no other squashy thing, 

 bribing them with some seeds of the good variety 

 to be preserved. In the Rocky Ford district, fa- 

 mous for its delicious muskmelons, it is humor- 

 ously said that a farmer would be lynched if he 

 were to plant a single squash-vine. In England, 

 where summers are short and cold, muskmelons 

 are necessarily grown in greenhouses, with a hive 

 of bees to carry the pollen from the staminate to 

 the pistillate floAvers, without which no fruit would 

 be produced. 



Wild Balsam-apple — Echinocystis lohata 



A very charming and decorative vine, growing 

 in great profusion along our roadsides, bearing. 



