Page:EB1911 - Volume 18.djvu/117

 MELON (Late Lat. melo, shortened form of Gr. , a kind of gourd;  , apple, and  , ripe), Cucumis melo, a polymorphic species of the order Cucurbitaceae, including numerous varieties. The melon is an annual trailing herb with palmately-lobed leaves, and bears tendrils by means of which it is readily trained over trellises, &c. It is monoecious, having male and female flowers on the same plant; the flowers have deeply five-lobed campanulate corollas and three stamens. Naudin observed that in some varieties (e.g., of Cantaloups)

fertile stamens sometimes occur in the female flowers. It is a native of south Asia “from the foot of the Himalayas to Cape Comoros,” where it grows spontaneously, but is cultivated in the temperate and warm regions of the whole world. It is variable both in diversity of foliage and habit, but much more so in the fruit, which in some varieties is no larger than an olive, while in others it rivals the gourd (Cucurbita maxima). The fruit is globular, ovoid, spindle-shaped, or serpent-like, netted or smooth-skinned, ribbed or furrowed, variously coloured externally, with white, green, or orange flesh when ripe, scented or scentless, sweet or insipid, bitter or even nauseous, &c. Like the gourd, the melon undergoes strange metamorphoses by crossing its varieties, though the latter preserve their characters when alone. The offspring of all crossings are fertile. As remarkable cases of sudden changes produced by artificially crossing races, M. Naudin records that in 1859 the offspring of the wild melons m. sauvage de l’Inde (C. melo agrestis) and m. s. d’Afrique, le petit m. de Figari bore different fruits from their parents, the former being ten to twelve times their size, ovoid, white-skinned, more or less scented, and with reddish flesh; though another individual bore fruits no larger than a nut. The offspring of m. de Figari after being crossed bore fruits of the serpent-melon. On the other hand, the serpent-melon was made to bear ovoid and reticulated fruit.

Naudin thinks it is probable that the culture of the melon in Asia is as ancient as that of all other alimentary vegetables. The Egyptians grew it, or at least inferior races of melon, which were either indigenous or introduced from Asia. The Romans and doubtless the Greeks were familiar with it, though some forms may have been described as cucumbers. Columella seems to refer to the serpent-melon in the phrase ut coluber ventre cubat flexo. Pliny describes them as pepones (xix. 23 to xx. 6) and Columella as melones (xi. 2, 53). The melon began to be extensively cultivated in France in 1629, according to Olivier de Serres. Gerard (Herball, 772) figured and described in 1597 several kinds of melons or pompions, but he has included gourds under the same name.

The origin of some of the chief modern races, such as “Cantaloups,” “Dudaim,” and probably the netted sorts, is due to Persia and the neighbouring Caucasian regions. The first of these was brought to Rome from Armenia in the 16th century, and supplies the chief sorts grown for the French markets; but many others are doubtless artificial productions of west Europe.

The water-melon (Citrullus vulgaris) is a member of a different genus of the same order. It has been cultivated for its cool refreshing fruit since the earliest times in Egypt and the Orient, and was known before the Christian era in southern Europe and Asia.

MELORIA, a rocky islet, surrounded by a shoal, almost opposite Leghorn. It was the scene of two naval battles of the