2IO FRUIT CULTURE UNDER GLASS. 



to be recommended, in the case of any who can devote 

 a few lights of a pit or house heated with hot water 

 to the purpose, but can be successfully and with com- 

 paratively little trouble adopted for the intermediate 

 crops in the hottest part of the season. Therefore, to 

 embrace all classes of growers, I will treat of both the 

 dung-bed and the melon-house systems. 



GROWING MELONS IN DUNG-BEDS OR PITS. 



The preparations necessary for constructing a seed- 

 bed for melons being the very same as for cucumbers, 

 in connection with which we shall detail them, — 

 knowing that early cucumbers are more generally cul- 

 tivated than very early melons, — we will not now 

 occupy space in giving the process here, but refer our 

 readers to the chapter on cucumber -culture. With 

 the same appliances as for cucumbers, the same sort 

 of pits recommended for fruiting cucumbers in answers 

 for melons ; and when they are fruited on an ordinary 

 hotbed and frame, the heat is maintained in the same 

 way as recommended in the case of the seed-bed for 

 raising cucumber-plants. In fact, if melons and cu- 

 cumber-plants are to be raised at the same time, the 

 same frame answers for both. 



Although melon-culture by this means has often 

 been commenced on the 1st of January, and fruit sent 

 to table early in May, it is a task involving the most 

 incessant watchfulness, and is attended with more or 

 less of uncertainty unless the spring be unusually fine, 

 Hence I do not recommend an earlier commencement 

 than the 1st of February, from which time even it is 

 not for a novice to carry out the various steps in the 

 process. Indeed it can scarcely be considered a judi- 



