326 On the Accumulation of Sap in Annual Plants, 



plants succeed best only because their stems are more firm and 

 ligneous, than those of young plants : but I feel confident that the 

 real cause of their succeeding best is the existence of accumulated 

 sap within them. I have a Melon plant now growing in the stove, 

 which sprang from a seed sown in the end of July ; but upon which 

 no fruit was made to set till the 1st day of November. The plant 

 possesses abundant foliage, and the fruit has grown tolerably well, 

 and it will, I conclude, be ripe about Christmas. Upon the 23d of 

 October I placed a blossom, which had been produced by a 

 Dampsha Melon Plant, from which I had a few days before taken 

 the fruit, within the distance of an inch of a very w arm flue, where 

 the temperature of the air was never below 86°. In this situation 

 the fruit set well, and grew with most extraordinary rapidity, though 

 it was so near the front wall, and so far (nearly three feet) from the 

 glass, that no direct ray of the sun could fall upon it. At the end 

 of seven days precisely from the period when the pollen was put 

 into the flower, I measured the fruit, when it was seven inches long, 

 and seven inches and a half in circumference. On the 10th day the 

 fruit suddenly ceased to grow, having apparently exhausted the 

 reservoir, whence it drew nutriment, and the plant withered ; on 

 the fourteenth day the fruit was gathered, when it weighed very 

 nearly a pound and a half. If the days had been long, and the 

 weather bright, the creation of sap would, I conclude, have nearly 

 kept pace with the very rapid expenditure of it ; and the plant 

 would not have died, as it apparently did, of exhaustion. 



By delaying the period of sowing the seeds of many species of 

 plants (the Turnip and some varieties of the Cabbage afford 

 examples) those, which would have afforded flowers and seeds 

 within the same season, form reservoirs of accumulated sap in 

 autumn, which becomes, during winter, the food of man, and other 

 animals. 



Proportionably late varieties of different species of annual plants 



