By Thomas Andrew Knight, Esq. 239 



through many successive seasons, and possessed a large extent 

 of roots and branches, every where amply stored with the 

 true sap, or living blood, of the plant generated in a prece- 

 ding season ; and possessing powers relative to vegetable life, 

 analogous to those of the blood of torpid animals. Their 

 blossoms and minute leaves had also been the product of the 

 labour of a past season. The Melon plants had, on the con- 

 trary, every thing to accomplish ; not only in a single season, 

 but in a small part of such season : and therefore I considered 

 a pound of fruit to every fifteen inches of glass roof, to be 

 the largest amount of perfect fruit upon which I could ven- 

 ture to calculate. The variety of Melon, which I proposed 

 to cultivate, was a Persian kind, chiefly grown in the vicinity 

 of Ispahan, whence it takes its name. Its form is nearly that 

 of a Cucumber, acquiring frequently more than a foot in 

 length, and weighing about seven pounds. It possesses, in 

 my estimation, very great excellence as a fruit ; but it is of 

 very difficult culture, the blossoms not setting freely : and 

 the fruit, on account of the excessive thinness of its skin, 

 being very subject to decay prematurely in the damp atmos- 

 phere of an ordinary hot-bed : and I had, on these accounts, 

 for some years wholly ceased to cultivate it. 



Having already described, with sufficient minuteness, the 

 mode of construction and plan of my hot-bed, I need not, at 

 present, do any thing more than describe the manner in 

 which my plants were managed in the last season ; they were 

 not planted till late in the spring, and therefore did not pro- 

 duce blossoms capable of affording fruit, till the second week 

 in July ; and it had consequently, in the last season, to grow 



vol. n. I i 



