154 
QUERIES AND ANSWERS. 
variety , whether screened or not, although I grew on one occasion 
eight or nine pots of Housainees and Ispahans in a small stove which 
were in no way shaded, otherwise than by their own foliage. The 
roots struck from the bottoms of the pots into a bed of leaves, and 
the foliage reposing upon a trellis overhead, converted the upper part 
of the house, for several feet, into a perfect bower. I frequently had 
90 to ,103 deg. at mid-day. 
Last year I saw a three-light pit of large dimensions, completely 
covered with plants of Ispahan and striped Housainee, raised by a 
clever melon grower, from seeds produced by myself. Neither bot¬ 
tom heat, nor external linings w r ere employed. All was health and 
luxuriance from May to September. I think that from fourteen to 
twenty melons were yielded ; some six or seven pounds. Not a 
crack or injury was visible. The plants grew in leaf mould chiefly, 
though either a portion of road sand or light loam had been added 
some time before. In fact, the gardener had not cleared out his pit 
for several seasons, and the radical processes of a previous crop of one 
kind or other, or the exudation from the roots, had manured the 
soil for another, and a different crop. The melon vines ran on the 
soil, but the fruits were supported upon bricks. 
Wood-lice have often perforated and gnawed melons. Is it pos¬ 
sible that the seeming cracks might be erosions of those mischievous 
insects ? 
Good loam must be a health-supplying medium to the melon 
plant, but perhaps the sward with grass remaining on it, chopped 
very fine, and enriched with one-third of pure black-leaf mould, or 
peat would be better. Let M. D. try again, and not be anxious about 
bottom heat. Let him screen with a mat, or an old bunting flag 
during the strongest solar influence, and I think he will succeed. A 
trellis certainly could do no injury : but my recent observations have 
satisfied me, that the Persian tribe can be grown in the common way. 
I believe that, if we except the fine, oval, large green-fleshed melon 
(which, surely, approaches to the Persian,) the Housainee of each 
variety and the Ispahan, are of more hardy constitution than any of 
the thick-rined varieties of Europe. 
The Author of the Domestic Gardener’s Manual. 
