588 On the Degeneracy of Persian Melons. 



in cultivating the variety as I have done, and that they will 

 find it, as I have done, superior in merit to any of those 

 which have subsequently been imported from Persia. 



Whenever it is my wish to obtain seeds of the Ispahan 

 Melon, I do not sow its seeds earlier than the middle of 

 April, that my plants may grow and blossom in J une, during 

 the brightest weather of our climate, and ripen their fruit early 

 in August. 



I have some reasons for believing that very valuable va- 

 rieties of the Melon may be obtained, for one generation at 

 least, by cross breeding between the smaller and more hardy 

 varieties of green and white fleshed Melons, and the large 

 Persian varieties. I obtained from one of our Members, Captain 

 Rainier, R. N. (to whom our gardens are indebted for some 

 other valuable articles) a Melon of a very singular character, 

 from the seeds of which, and the pollen of the Ispahan 

 Melon, I obtained plants of more hardy and productive 

 habits than those of the Ispahan Melon, and which afforded 

 fruit scarcely, if at all, inferior to that. The colour of the 

 above-mentioned, which I received from Captain Rainier, is 

 pale green, with longitudinal stripes of very deep green ; and 

 being very long and slender whilst young, it excited in the 

 minds of several persons, when they first saw it, the idea of a 

 snake lying amongst the leaves of the plant. During the 

 growth of the fruit the pale green part of it acquires a very 

 bright yellow colour, and this, as the fruit approaches matu- 

 rity, slowly fades into the colour of box-wood. Its flesh being 

 green and of good quality, though inferior in richness to that 

 of the Ispahan, and the plants extremely productive of 

 fruit, I introduced the pollen of the Ispahan Melon into its 



