“GOURDS 377i 
and level, and shallow circular hollows are formed with the 
hand, a foot wide, and half an inch deep in the middle. 
The distance between each hollow is three feet and ‘a half, 
and the distance between the rows five or six feet. Hight 
or ten seeds are deposited in each cavity. This is done in 
the beginning of June. When the plants appear, they aro 
thinned out to three or four, the weakest or least healthy 
being rejected. They are watered occasionally, according 
to the state of the weather. The cucumbers are not ex- 
pected nor wished to attain a large size; they are gathered 
chiefly from the middle to the end of August. Vast 
quantities of these open-ground girkins are taken to the 
London market. The village of Sandy, in Bedfordshire, 
has been known to furnish 10,600 bushels of drilled cucum- 
bers in one week, Cucumbers may be procured in a hot- 
house during the winter months. For this purpose the 
seedlings are not raised till the month of August, and they 
are prevented from expending their energies in the produc- 
tion of blossom or fruit till they have been introduced into 
the stove. Their stems are then firm, and, as Mr. Knight 
remarks, the plants possess within themselves a quantity of 
accumulated sap. 
Gourps, species or varieties of the species of the genux 
Cucurbita, may be grown like drilled cucumbers, or 
trained against walls or on pales. Though occasionally 
used as esculents, they are regarded chiefly as curiosities, 
the fruit of some kinds being very ornamental. The 
Succada (Cicader, Cucurbita ovifera), or vegetable mar 
row, isa very useful sort, and in request for the table, 
being eaten stewed with white sauce or mashed like turnips. 
It may be raised in an exhausted melon-frame or pit; or it 
may be sown under a hand-glass, and afterwards trans- 
