On Melons. 205 



much glass in square or fragment, as will cover the mouth of a 

 48-sizecl pot. 



The cuttings should be taken from the extremities of the 

 healthiest vines, cut close below the third joint from the tip, and 

 inserted in thumb-pots filled with leaf soil and loam mixed, 

 about half an inch below the surface of the soil ; and these 

 placed in the bottom of a 48-sized pot, and the cavity between 

 the two pots stuffed with moist moss, and the glass laid over 

 the top of the outer pot, which ought to be plunged in a hot- 

 bed up to the brim : this is an improvement in striking cuttings 

 which I have never made known before, nor have 1 ever seen 

 it practised by any one else. It is a common way to fill a pot 

 three fourths full of soil, and in that to insert the cuttings under 

 a pane of glass ; and I have no doubt, when those that have prac- 

 tised that mode come to see this simple improvement, so much 

 more workmanlike, and applicable not only to melon cuttings, 

 but to all sorts of cuttings, exotic, green-house, and hardy, they 

 will feel nowise reluctant to relinquish the old way. The advan- 

 tages of this mode are, when the cuttings get up to the glass, 

 which they generally do before they have struck root, the outer 

 pot can be changed for one a little deeper, and the moist moss 

 serves the two-fold purpose of conducting heat and moisture ; 

 and, as the heat of the tan or dung bed will be 30° or 40° above 

 that of the atmosphere of the house or pit (a good tan bed will 

 range about 1 10° at 6 in. deep), it will be communicated through 

 the outer pot to the atmosphere around the cuttings, thereby 

 accelerating their striking root : this latter is an advantage 

 possessed in common with the old system over the bell-glass 

 propagating pot. 



To some readers this may appear trifling and tedious ; but 

 others, who have to wipe out some hundreds of propagating 

 glasses every morning, will find it a far less laborious and 

 equally successful method, instead of wiping the glasses, simply 

 to turn them over. Many heaths may be struck in this manner, 

 by letting the pots stand on a shady shelf for a few weeks, 

 and afterwards plunging them in a mild bark bed. 



But to return to the melon culture. Plants being reared, 

 either from seeds or cuttings, healthy and robust, are, let us pre- 

 sume, in 32-sized pots, about 9 in. high, with leaves as large 

 as the palm of the hand. The hot-bed being made up to 

 within 18 in. of the glass, and a ridge of loamy turf, mixed with 

 one fourth its quantity of dung pulverised to a mould, being laid 

 along the centre of the bed, about 12 or 14 inches deep, a day 

 or two previous to the planting of the melons; and all fears of 

 offensive steam from the bed or linings being guarded against; 

 the plants may be turned out of the pots along the centre of the 

 ridge, about 1 ft. apart for a bed 9 ft. wide, or for a 6-foot 



p 3 



