THE FORCING GARDEN. 



C79 



in a bearing stare, except any vines, which appear weak or 

 ill-placed, or where they may be too much crowded, such only 

 should be entirely displaced. When it becomes necessary to 

 remove any such shoots, pinch them neatly off with the finger 

 and thumb, in preference to using the knife ; but if the knife 

 should be used, let the shoot so amputated be bruised between 

 the finger and thumb, so as to stop or prevent too great a 

 share of sap, or in other words, the blood of the plants, from 

 escaping. 



If the plants have been well managed, and no accident has 

 taken place, fruit will be showing in abundance upon the cu- 

 cumber plants. The melons, from their nature, will not show 

 for some time yet, most generally some weeks afterwards. 

 When the female flowers appear, which will be readily distin- 

 guished from the male flower, the former always having at 

 their base the rudiments of the future fruit, the latter having 

 no such appendage, but merely a simple flower containing the 

 stamina, with the fertilizing dust, pollen, or farina, covering 

 the tips of the stamina or male parts of fructification. When 

 such flowers appear, the important oflice of assisting impreg- 

 nation falls to the care of the cultivator, and should not be 

 neglected. 



The work of impregnation, or setting the fruit, as it is tech- 

 nically called, is, as Abcrcromby very justly observes, a most 

 important operation of art incumbent on the gardener, par- 

 ticularly in the early cultivation of these plants, while wholly 

 confined in frames, as at this time the operations of nature 

 are almost excluded. This should be done accordingly as the 

 flowers, both male and female, come into full bloom ; and it Is 

 performed by injecting the farina or male dust into the stigma 

 or female part of the fructification. Plants, which contain the 

 male and female parts of fructification within the same flower, 

 and are hence called hermaphrodites ^ do not require in most 

 cases this care ; but such as have these organs placed in dif- 

 ferent flowers, are therefore less likely to be fecundated without 

 artificial means, particularly when confined in the close at- 

 mosphere of a common hot-bed, and at so early a period of 

 the year when few or no insects are in existence to carry the 

 impregnating matter from one flower to another. Such plants 



