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XIII. Upon the Cultivation of the Persian Varieties of the 

 Melon. Bij Thomas Andrew Knight, Esq. F. R, 8. Pre- 

 sident. 



Read May 1, 1831. 



I sent to the Horticultural Society, in the last season, a couple 

 of Ispahan Melons ; one in August, which, I had the pleasure to 

 hear was thought very excellent : and the other (which did not ripen 

 till the latter end of October) not more inferior than might have been 

 anticipated, on account of the diminished powers of the sun in the 

 latter period. Both were the produce of very ill-treated plants : 

 but both had the advantages of very excellent machinery ; and the 

 effects of the management were so singular, that a statement of 

 them may prove alike interesting to the mere practical, and to the 

 physiological, horticulturist. 



Having, during several years, observed, that fine Persian Melons 

 were preferred at my table to almost every other species of fruit, 

 I was led to erect, early in the last spring, a small forcing house 

 for the almost exclusive culture of them; and by means of heat ob- 

 tained from fire only, under an impression that in some seasons, and 

 states of the weather, the power of commanding a dry atmosphere, 

 and high temperature, would prove highly beneficial to the quality 

 of the fruit. This forcing house consists of a back wall nearly nine 

 feet high, and of a front wall nearly six feet high, enclosing a hori- 

 zontal space of nine feet wide ; and the house is thirty feet long. It 

 might as well have been forty feet long; but the smaller size was 

 sufficient for my purpose. The fire place is at the east end, very 

 near the front wall, and the flue passes to the other end of the 

 house within four inches of the front wall, and returns back again, 



