324 On the Accumulation of Sap in Annual Plants, 



saccharine matter, than the sap of trees of greater age of the same 

 species, and growing in the same soil, and in the same seasons. 

 Under the influence of abundant light, in those climates in which 

 the Melon was placed by nature, the first formed fruit probably 

 acquires a high state of perfection, possibly greater than it can ever 

 be made to acquire in less favourable climates. But this I am much 

 disposed to question, and to believe that, by proper management, 

 the Melon may be made to acquire in the climate of England a 

 degree of excellence, which it is very rarely found to possess in any 

 climate ; and that the degeneracy of the finest varieties may be 

 totally prevented. 



Very young plants of the sweet Melon of Ispahan (the variety 

 which till within the present year I have chiefly cultivated) very 

 rarely shew fruit ; and in my Melon House I never suffer a lateral 

 shoot, or blossom of this variety, to be produced at a less distance 

 from the root than that of the fourteenth or fifteenth joint above the 

 seed-leaves : and when I am anxious to obtain the fruit, and seeds, 

 in the highest state of perfection, I do not suffer a blossom to be 

 produced nearer the root than its eighteenth, or twentieth, joint. 

 Under this mode of management, the expenditure of sap, being 

 confined to the extremity of a single stem, is very small compara- 

 tively with the creation of it, and it consequently accumulates, and 

 the fruit is therefore most abundantly nourished, — I conceive more 

 abundantly, than it usually is in any natural climate : and its 

 growth is always enormously rapid. 



The striped and green Hoosainee Melon Plants, of which I 

 received seeds from the Horticultural Society in the last spring, being 

 much disposed to bear fruit, produced blossoms at their third joints ; 

 but being desirous of obtaining the fruit, and seeds of those varie- 

 ties in the highest possible state of perfection, I subjected those 

 varieties to the same mode of management ; and I believe with the 

 best success, though I am ignorant of the merits of those varieties 

 utwW other circumstances. 



