362 FORCING GARDEN. 
Tur Metonry—a department deriving its name from 
the melon, the principal plant cultivated in it—is an im- 
portant appendage of the forcing garden. After noticing 
some of the most necessary apparatus employed in it, we 
shall treat of the melon, cucumber, and gourd, and their 
culture respectively. 
The common hotbed frame is most usually employed; 
and it is so well known as scarcely to require description. 
It is a rectangular box, with sliding sashes, which may be 
single, in pairs, or in threes. The length of the sash is 
generally five or six feet, and its breadth about three feet 
and a half. The back of the frame is about double the 
height of the front, it being intended that the slope should 
be set towards the south. When used, it is placed on a 
bed of fermenting vegetable matter, from three to six feet 
in thickness, according to the purpose to which it is to be 
applied, or the severity of the season. Stable-litter is the 
fermenting material most commonly employed; but tree- 
leaves, exhausted tanners’ bark, or flax-dressers’ refuse, 
are also used. Tree-leaves, when moderately dry and well 
trodden, are more equable in their fermenting heat, and 
retain it longer than the other materials mentioned. If a 
layer, half a foot thick, of bark be placed over a bed of 
leaves five feet thick, a gentle and uniform temperature 
may be commanded for several successive months. 
The Alderston Melon Pit, of which the following is a 
section, is partly above and partly below ground. The 
Fig. 47. 
