451 
forms of seeds and fruits than of any other parts of vegetables. To 
such, therefore, our present consideration will be chiefly directed. 
Among those figured stones which have obtained the greatest 
celebrity, from their resemblance to fruits, are the melons of Mount 
Carmel. ' Melopeponites, Aldrovandi. These are ci^^stalline geodes 
which not unfrequently bear the forms of melons and other fruits : 
the rounded, granular-formed crystals having been supposed to re- 
semble the seed, and credulity having sometimes gone so far as to 
fancy, that the smell of the fruit was yet discoverable in its supposed 
petrified remains. One of these petrified melons of Mount Carmel, 
of a small size, and opened, is represented in Plate IX. Fig. 5. The 
bare-footed friars of Mount Carmel have chiefly contributed to the 
fame which these substances have acquired, they having, by the aid 
of an old legendary tale, been able to render them an article of profit 
to themselves, and of great curiosity with travellers, who have re- 
sorted to Palestine. On this mount there is a particular spot, which 
is termed the field of melons, where these bodies used frequently to 
be found : but which of late appears to have been exhausted, by the 
traffic of preceding years. The legend says, - On this spot was a 
garden-ground, well stocked with melons ; and that the prophet 
Elias, the founder of the monastery, once asking the gardener or one 
of his melons, he, with churlish humour, answered, that they were 
not melons, but stones ; on which they were immediately changed to 
stones, and have so remained to the present day.” But, according 
to the industrious friars of the order of Elias, the punishment o t e 
gardener’s pertness did not rest here ; since they furnish travellers 
with other fruits, which, happening to be in the same garden, share 
the same fate ; thus we have the Vomum crystallmum, &c. For e 
mode in which this extraordinary miracle was performed I must re er 
you to a former Letter, (XXXII) not thinking it necessary to pause 
any longer here, in removing any doubts which scepticism may ave 
suggested. 
