Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XI.djvu/384

 372 MELODEON MELON murder, and was for years an exile in Brazil. Many of his works are unpublished, but more than 100 volumes have been printed. His most popular poems are embraced in Las tres mvsas del Melodino (Lisbon, 1649). MELODEON (Gr. fiefodia, melody), the name, at different times, of two or more unlike forms of musical instruments, but now appropriated to one of recent date, and so far excelling those before it as to be substantially a new in- vention. In this, externally resembling the piano, the tones are produced by touching the keys of a finger-board ; each key, lifting a valve, allows a current of air from a bellows, worked meanwhile by the foot on a pedal, to agitate the corresponding one of a series of metallic free reeds ; the compass is five to seven octaves. The rocking melodeon, known in America since about 1825, was unsightly, tardy in sounding, and of harsh tone. Jeremiah Carhart improved the plan of acting on the reeds by suction instead of blowing, and intro- duced other improvements, inventing the pres- ent instrument in 1836. The art of voicing the reeds, the most important improvement in such instruments, was invented by Emmons Hamlin in 1848. (See REED INSTRUMENTS.) In 1859, 22,000 melodeons were manufactured in the United States. But few are now made, this instrument having been almost entirely superseded by the cabinet or parlor organ, nearly 30,000 of which were manufactured in the United States in 1872. MELODRAMA. See DBAMA, vol. vi., p. 247. MELODY. See Music. MELON, the common name for fruits of vines of the cucurbitacecB or gourd family. In Eng- land, where but one kind is cultivated, the name melon applies solely to the fruit of cu- eumis melo ; but in this country we have also the fruit of a very distinct plant, citrullw vulgaris, and the distinction is made of musk- melon for the one and watermelon for the other. The same uncertainty surrounds the origin of the muskmelon that attaches to many of our cultivated plants ; it is quite doubtful whether it has ever been found in a truly wild state, but it is supposed to have originated in India, and to have been brought thence by Muskmelon Vine. way of Persia. As with other cultivated plants of the family, the tendency to vary is great, and the forms or varieties in cultivation are numerous. The plant is a running vine, ex- tending from 4 to 8 ft. or more, bearing large, generally heart-shaped and angled leaves, rough on both sides ; the tendrils are simple ; the flow- ers monoecious, the sterile in small clusters and the pistillate ones solitary in the axils of the leaves ; the fruit, which is variable in size, has a thick and fleshy pericarp, usually ribbed ex- teriorly ; when ripe, the watery and stringy placentae only partly fill the cavity, and are re- jected with the seeds when the fruit is eaten. The melon reaches its greatest perfection in warm climates, but so readily does it adapt it- self to cultivation that several varieties come to maturity in the short summers of New Eng- land. In England melons cannot be raised with any certainty except under glass, but in this country they are almost entirely cultivated in the open air. The soil can hardly be made too rich, and it is the custom to sow the seeds in hills which have been especially prepared with an abundance of well decomposed manure. As the young plants are attacked by various insects, a great, abundance of seed is sown, and when they are large enough to run, all the plants but two or three are removed from the hills, which are made 6 or 8 ft. apart each way. In field culture no other care is given than to protect the young plants from insects by dusting with lime or ashes, but in gardens the vines are sometimes pinched at the ends to induce branching, and the fruit is turned to insure its ripening evenly; when thoroughly ripe the stem separates from its attachment to the fruit by a well defined line, and a prac- tised eye can judge by this alone of the matu- rity of the fruit. Great numbers of melons are shipped from southern ports to northern cities; these are picked before they are fully mature, and come into condition for eating by the time they reach the consumer. The varie- ties, if grown near one another, are very diffi- cult to keep pure, and it is the custom with those who raise melons for market to have but one variety, and to take great care in the selection of plants for seed ; and each grower generally has his own particular "^train." In size the varieties range from the pocket mel- on, no larger than an orange, to the large Persian kinds weighing 12 or 15 Ibs. ; in form they are globular, oblate, or oval. In no re- spect is the difference greater than in the quality of the flesh; the common muskmel- on, still found in some country gardens, with its name corrupted not inappropriately into mushmelon, with its dry, mealy, and nearly tasteless fruit, is so inferior to the rich, melt- ing improved varieties, that one can hardly believe them to have had the same origin. Melons from seed brought from Armenia by missionaries were cultivated over three cen- turies ago at Canteluppi, a villa near Rome, and thence introduced to other parts of Europe as canteloupes ; the name is still in use in some parts of Europe for a class of depressed-spheri- cal, deeply ribbed, yellow-fleshed varieties, but in this country it is of very indefinite applica- tion, and has almost entirely passed out of use. The surface in some varieties is quite smooth,