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 440 passion for novelty should have induced growers to encourage a multiplicity of varieties, since, as he says, were the culture limited to about twelve varieties, this number would include every important diversity, while consumers could then much more easily identify and secure whichever kind they might have learned to prefer.

Melons are now generally divided by English cultivators into four sections: the thick-skinned, soon perishing sorts, grouped together under the general name of Cantaloupes; the longer-keeping Winter Melons; Persians; and Water Melons. The type of the first enumerated class was probably the original old-fashioned Musk Melon, characterised by the thick network of grey lines over its surface, and by possessing very little scent, varying in size from 1 lb. to 30 lb. or 40 lb. weight, but being so uncertain in quality that out of half-a-dozen fruits but one perhaps would be found good. This earliest-known sort was almost banished from good gardens on the introduction of superior kinds. One of the first to supersede it, and still one of the most esteemed throughout Europe, though reckoned in America but second-rate, was the melon which claims in a more restricted sense, as the original owner of that name, the title of the Cantaloupe, having been so called from a town of that name, situate about fifteen miles from Rome, and where this fruit has been cultivated ever since the Mithridatic war, having been brought, it is said, by Lucullus in the last century B.C. from Armenia to Italy, and thence taken by Charles VIII. into France. Usually nearly round, and of middling size, though not constant even in these particulars; its exterior, always remarkably rough and irregular, varies much in colour, being sometimes orange mottled with green, sometimes green and black, or some other variegation, the darkest colours being those which are generally preferred; while the flesh also assumes different tints, being in some nearly white, in others orange or pinkish. The diversity of size among melons classed as Cantaloupes is very great, but all are characterised by a more or less rough and thick rind, which considerably reduces the eatable proportion of the fruit, a defect which seems to increase in the larger-growing kinds, as in the old Black Rock Melon, for instance, which often attains a weight of 14 lbs., about three-parts of it, however, being composed of a rugged wall of rind studded with carbuncles, and a mass of seeds within, embedded in the fraction of eatable pulp, small indeed in quantity and very poor in quality.

The Citron, or green-fleshed melon, was brought into France by a monk from Africa, in 1777, and has thence spread into many countries and given birth to numerous varieties. Frederick the Great was so passionately fond of a small melon of this sort, that he could not conquer himself sufficiently to abstain from them even when his health was in danger; for Zimmerman, who attended him in his last illness, finding him suffering severely from indigestion, discovered that he ate three or four of these fruits daily for breakfast, and on remonstrating with him the only reply he could get from the despot was an attempt to make them their own apology, by promising to send him some the next day, that he might taste for himself how excellent they were. It is this Citron melon, too, which is the greatest favourite in America, being one of the finest grown there, and yet peculiarly easy of culture, the climate of the middle and southern States suiting it better than even any part of Europe, so that it is raised as a field crop by market-gardeners, and sold in August, in the markets of New York and Philadelphia, at the price of half-a-dollar for a basket containing nearly a bushel, proving even then one of the most profitable of crops. The warm dry climate of Long Island and New Jersey is specially suited to the culture of melons of any kind, but many other sorts require greater care than the green-fleshed favourite, without compensating for it by any superiority, and it therefore has few rivals. Melons flourish too in California, where, however, they command far higher prices, selling throughout the season (from July to November) at from seventy-five cents to one dollar each. “To those who have never seen melons grown,” says the author of “California and its Resources” (published in 1858), “it will seem simply absurd to say, that confident hopes are entertained of realising from 15,000 to 20,000 dollars from one patch of two acres, belonging to Major Barbour, this present year. But we were assured that 200 to 300 dollars’ worth of melons per day were sold during the first week of the season.”

The distinction which assigns Winter Melons to a separate class, seems due rather to the fruiterer than the botanist, since, irrespective of other peculiarities, any melon which will keep long after gathering, must belong, as of right, to this class. Melons which can be kept till the winter when hung in a dry room, are common in Spain, and the name of one of our best winter fruits, the green Valentia, points to a Spanish origin; while another, the Dampsha, is asserted to be a hybrid Persian.

A very distinct variety, comparatively recently introduced into Europe, is the Persian Melon, the seeds of which were sent here direct from Persia by our ambassador there, Mr. Willock, in 1824, and were first sown in the gardens of the Horticultural Society, where they produced at once ten different varieties. Though requiring in their native country no further attention than a regular and abundant supply of water, mostly obtained by irrigation, the meadows in which the plants are grown being flooded so that the roots are kept absolutely under water, yet they are found elsewhere to need great care, and on this account, though introduced into America and attaining great perfection there when duly tended, they are very rarely seen, Transatlantic impatience grudging generally the expenditure of so much assiduity. In England it is by no means easy to secure the requisite combination of a wet warm soil and a dry air, the covering used to confine the heat tending also to cause general moisture by producing evaporation: but in spite of these difficulties, our gardeners contrive to rear them in great perfection, and as some may be eaten as soon as gathered, and others must be kept for months, even quite into winter, they are obtainable during a great portion of the year. In Persia they attain such magnitude that, according to