150 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
Mat 
die. One thing should not be forgotten—staminate 
flowers are not only much more numerous than pistil¬ 
late, on all sorts of vines, but begin to appear one or 
two weeks earlier, and are most numerous the whole 
season. 
IV. Choice of Melons. 
He who has once tasted a good Green Flesh Melon, 
will rarely long for a Yellow one. “ But of the Green 
which are the best?” I answer that between the Green 
which I have cultivated, there is but little room to 
choose in regard to flavor. Yet to the cultivator it is 
important to make a wise selection. The Persian is 
a little the earliest, and requires the most care, as it 
should be watered almost daily in a dry season. Its 
fruit also fails rapidly in quality on the approach of 
autumn. The Skillman is somewhat liable to crack 
and rot, especially in wet weather. The Honey Melon 
is too small for a market melon. The New Jersey 
Rock Citron is the latest melon we have, and there¬ 
fore it is not so eligible as some others. The Citron re¬ 
mains to be noticed. It is usually the largest of all 
"fine Green flesh, is more uniformly good in all seasons, 
and holds its qualities at the approach of autumn far 
beyond any melon of my acquaintance ; often present¬ 
ing a bright green luscious flesh when all others have 
become pale and vapid. I have said nothing here of 
the Minorca. When ripened in very hot weather it is 
often of fair flavor, but it so uniformly cracks before it 
is ripe, and so loses all flavor at the first approach 
of cold weather, that I consider it worthless; though 
to the eye it is the most magnificent of all Green mel¬ 
ons, sometimes reaching with me the weight of nine 
and a half pounds. 
I have said nothing of the cultivation of the melon. 
That, in so cold a climate as that of Utica, would alone 
become the subject of a long article. 
I subjoin a description of the principal melons re¬ 
ferred to above. 
1. The Honey, very small, white, round, smooth; 
very thick meated, of most delicious flavor. 
2. The Skillman, as purified in my hands, is small, 
flattish, has moderate sutures thickly netted on a green 
ground. (3.) The Rock Citron is much like the Skill- 
man, only with deeper sutures, and more variable in 
size. 
4. The Persian is oval, with a slight neck, thinly 
netted, on a green ground, which approaches a yellow 
when ripe. Its flesh is a little thinner than that of 
the preceding kinds, and not so deep a green. It has 
moderate sutures, and is larger than any of the preced¬ 
ing kinds. 
5. The Citron. This melon is bluntly oval, larger 
than any other Green Flesh, except the Minorca, usu¬ 
ally moderately netted, on a deep green ground, which 
changes but slightly as it approaches ripeness. It has 
a very obscure suture. 
I think the community are greatly in danger of being 
gulled in the recommendation of melons. Should a 
pomologist make the tour of Persia, Afghanistan and 
Egypt, he could not find melons which, when brought 
home and cultivated here, would be superior in flavor 
to almost any one of the fine good varieties noticed 
above. He who wisely cultivates them in a hot sand, 
in a warm and long season, will have fruit as rich as 
a Peach —us rich as can grow in this country. Ordi¬ 
narily they should be forwarded in a hot bed, so that 
they may ripen under a July and August sun. 
Y. Melon Squash. 
This is a hybrid between the Green Fleshed Melon 
and the Seven Years Pumpkin. The latter, for some 
reason, had not with me answered its character abroad 
either in the richness of its flavor, or in its duration. 
In the July of 1844, I impregnated about fifty of its 
pistillate flowers with the staminate of some of my va¬ 
rieties of the Green Flesh, although I did not notice 
which. The flowers were covered carefully with paper, 
immediately after impregnation, to exclude bees and 
flies. About six or eight were successful. The fruit 
was not altered in size and appearance that year, but 
the seed was, as it became thicker and more stubbed 
than the original seed of the Seven Year Pumpkin, 
while its color became exactly that of the melon seed. 
In 1845 I planted seed from four specimens that seemed 
most changed by the crossing. In consequence of very 
dry weather and neglect, all these failed but one. 
This one produced largely. From its crop I selected 
a few specimens that combined the Nankin Yellow and 
pale Blue of the Pumpkin with the knotty and netted 
appearance of the Melon. These and others like them 
were planted in large quantity for market in 1846 and 
1847. 
The Result is a rich, thick-meated Squash, (or 
Pumpkin if you please.) much richer than its Pumpkin 
parent, with a yellow, almost red, flesh. This Squash 
is not so long a keeper as the Pumpkin from which it 
was derived, but is to me a more valuable variety. 
I remark on Squashes, as I did upon Melons, that 
the public are perpetually amused with intelligence of 
new and extraordinary varieties. Mammoth Squashes 
are valuable only to look at. For the table they are 
comparatively less valuable than (i Still fed Beef.” 
Any one who has a rich spot of moist ground, can grow 
a mammoth Pumpkin; but when grown it is far less 
valuable and deserving of a “State Fair Premium” 
than a great crop of corn. The true Valparaiso Cheese 
and Winter Crook Neck, and my Melon Squashes are, 
I apprehend, as rich and valuable varieties as our cli¬ 
mate can ever produce. They have the advantage of 
moderate size, and this is not a small one either to the 
cultivator or the consumer. Let us hold on to them, 
and discard new varieties unless they are recommended 
by an old wholesale cultivator in the most unqualified 
manner. In the hands of a tolerably careful gardener, 
Squashes need never run out. A good corn season will 
almost always give good winter Squashes, if they are 
planted early so as to mature, like the Melon, in the 
very hottest weather, or if not absolutely to mature, at 
least to get the most of their growth during this sea¬ 
son. Squashes are sometimes rejected because, being 
planted one season, they fail. I had a valuable Squash 
that was not eatable in 1840 and 1841, which, both 
before and since, has been very fine. 
Improvement of Varieties. 
A writer in the Gardener’s Chronicle gives some in¬ 
teresting results of experiments in improving the va¬ 
rieties of vegetables. He began with long pod beans. 
He took for seed, none with fewer than five seeds in a 
pod. The following year there were, many six seeded 
pods, and some with seven. Still selecting the best, 
he procured many six and seven seeded pods, and some 
with eight. In this way new and distinct varieties 
were formed; for while some remained with fiveseeded 
pods, it was found that they rarely had a six seeded 
pod upon them; while those with six seeded pods were 
nearly all so, and some seven seeded. New varieties 
are only produced from seed ; hence the importance of 
a constant care in selection in all crops which are an¬ 
nually reproduced in this way. A skilful market gar¬ 
dener in Western New-York, by constantly selecting 
the earliest seeds of the Washington pea, in a few years 
had them more than a week earlier than his neighbors, 
who had cultivated the same variety. Plants not re¬ 
produced by seeds, as the potato by eyes or tubers, 
and fruit trees by grafts and buds, remain perfectly un¬ 
changed for ages j for this is only a continuation of th© 
