110 



KITCHEN-GARDEN PLANTS. 



[chap. 



Melons want hotter ground than is hardly ever to be had in Eng- 

 land. There should be but one plant in a hill. I have had ten 

 fine melons from one single plant, and I never saw the like of that 

 from any hill that contained two or three plants. If once the 

 plants get spindUng, they never bear fruit of any size or goodness. 

 You will see many fruit appear before any one begins to swell. If 

 a solitary one should begin to swell before the vines have got to 

 any extent, pinch it off ; for, if left on, it will generally prevent the 

 plant from bearing any more. There should be three or four upon 

 a plant beginning to swell together, or about the same time, in 

 order to encourage you to expect a fine crop. Melons are very 

 frequently raised, as pines sometimes are, in pits, with foundations 

 for frames built upon the ground, or going a little way beneath the 

 top of the ground. Upon these walls a wooden coping is fixed, and 

 across this coping the lights slide up and down. These are very con- 

 venient places for melons ; but, as they do not enter into the plan of 

 my garden, it would be useless to take up the time of the reader w ith 

 a more particular description of them. When the fruit of the melon 

 is perceived to be fairly swelling, a piece of glass or of tile should be 

 laid under each fruit to keep it out of the dirt, and, indeed, to add a 

 little to the heat that it would receive from the sun ; for melons re- 

 quire heat from the sun as well as heat from the earth ; and take 

 what pains we will, we have never fine melons in a shady or wet 

 summer. As to the sorts of melons, some are finer than others, and 

 some come into bearing sooner than others. In speaking of sorts 

 I cannot do better than to take the list from the Hortus Kewensis, 

 written by Mr Aiton, gardener to the King ; for surely that which 

 contents his Majesty may very well content any of us. This list is as 

 follows : Early cantaleupe, early leopard, early Polignac, early ro- 

 mana, green-fleshed netted, green-fleshed rock, Bosse's early rocky 

 black rock, silver rock, scarlet-fleshed rock. In America, they divide 

 the melons into two sorts, which are wholly distinct from each other : 

 one they call the musk melon ; that is to say, any melon which 

 belongs to the tribe of those that we cultivate here, and they call 

 these musk melons because they have a musky smell. The other 

 species they call the water melon, which has no smell, which never 

 turns yellow, which is always of a deep green, in the inside of which, 

 instead of being a fleshy pulp, is a sort of pink-coloured snow, 

 which melts in the mouth. This melon very frequently weighs 

 from twenty to forty pounds, and is not deemed much of a fruit 



