Greeks, who were accustomed to soak the seeds in milk and honey previous to sowing them, and even put them into the earth surrounded with rose-leaves, believing that when thus cradled in sweetness the fruit to which they gave birth could not but be mild and fragrant. The Great Baber has the credit of having introduced it to his subjects in Hindostan, where it now abounds, it having been indigenous only to the milder parts of Asia. How early it was brought to this country is not known with certainty; for though Gough, in his “Topography,” says that it was grown here in the time of Edward III. (having only gone out if cultivation, along with the cucumber, during the troubled time of the Wars of the Roses which followed), it is generally supposed that the object to which he refers was really the pumpkin, which was called the “melon” by old writers, the fruit to which that name is now restricted having formerly been distinguished by the title of musk-melon. It is most probable that it was really only brought to England from Italy in the time of Henry VIII.; for in 1526, Gerard, though he had not himself grown it, yet mentions having seen it at “the Queen’s hothouse at St. James’s,” and also at Lord Sussex’s house at Bermondsey, where, he says, “from year to year there is great plenty, especially if the weather be anything temperate.” Parkinson, in 1629, says that before his time “melons have been only eaten by great personages, because the fruit was not only delicate but rare, and therefore divers were brought from France and since were nursed up by kings’ and noblemen’s gardeners;” but they were then becoming more common. Subsequently, the melon became an article of great though never of very general consumption, the costliness incidental to artificial production putting it beyond the means of the majority of people; but it was not unusual for market-gardeners to tend 300 or 400 “lights” of melons, producing from week to week large quantities, which were easily disposed of at high prices to the wealthy. Now, however, as Glenny in a recent work deplores, “it is rare to see any quantity grown; and the foreign melons, though unfit to eat, seem to usurp at the market the places of their betters, at a price that would scarcely pay an English grower for cutting them and bringing them to market, even if they cost nothing to grow:” for the facilities afforded by steam communication have caused a large supply to be imported from abroad, chiefly from Spain and Portugal, where they can be grown in the open air, and also from Holland, where large quantities are raised by artificial means for the London market. The general public being thus provided for, home-grown melons, though much preferred to imported ones when available, are seldom enjoyed except by the rich employers of highly-paid skilful gardeners; for the authority just quoted adds further, that the melon “is not worth forcing by those who have but small means, as it has many chances against it.”
A native of warmer climates and provided by Nature with a rind of such thickness that only extreme heat can penetrate to ripen the pulp within, when grown in this country it needs, in addition to the artificial heat applied by the cultivator, as much as our summer sunshine can supply of a more genial kind of glow, and therefore is seldom obtained before May or after October, though modern improvements in greenhouses, and the introduction of thinner-skinned varieties, have somewhat extended the period during which they can be procured, and in time will probably still further lengthen their season. Occasionally grown from cuttings as a surer method of securing an unchanged perpetuation of the parent plant, the usual mode of propagation is by seeds, which are tested, like witches of old, by being thrown into water, when floating on the surface ensures the condemnation of a melon-seed as certainly as it once did that of an old woman. Age too has much to do with the choice of them, for, unlike most other seeds, perfect freshness is so far from being a desideratum, that it is not until they are two years old that they are considered fit for sowing, since seed in which the exuberant vitality has not been checked and enfeebled by age, would give birth to plants too luxuriant in growth for the small space which is all that can be allotted to them where artificial culture is required. Due limits, however, must be observed; for though seeds forty years old have been known to vegetate and grow into fruitful plants, their germination becomes doubtful if they are kept for more than three or four years. Though sometimes grown in the South of England, under hand-glasses, like cucumbers, they cannot generally be reared in this country in the open air, since 65° is the least temperature at which the seeds will germinate, and from 75° to 80° is needed before the fruit can be ripened. A sheltered hotbed, therefore, becomes here essential to their existence.
An annual plant, destined only to exist for the space of a few months, yet to attain large dimensions in all its parts, the growth of the melon is very rapid, the newly-quickened seed soon sending forth tender succulent shoots, which, as they speedily lengthen, develope numerous large, alternately-disposed, lobed leaves, accompanied by spiral tendrils; and in the course of the third month after sowing, the pale yellow flowers begin to unfold their soft, limp, five-cleft corollas, the males encircling three stamens, on which appear the curiously arranged anthers, in the form of serpentine lines waved up and down near their summit, while the females are easily distinguished by the green ovary swelling out below the blossom, the centre of which is occupied by a short style with three thick stigmas. The male flowers generally appear first, but Dr. Carpenter affirms that this matter is entirely governed by the degree of warmth to which the plants are exposed, and that if the proportion of heat greatly exceeds that of light male flowers are produced, whereas if these conditions be reversed only female ones appear. In fine summer weather, when glasses can be left almost constantly open, the breeze may waft pollen from this blossom to that, or honey-seeking bees, brushing past the anthers of one, may bear off the golden dust, to deposit it again, just where it is needed, as they plunge among the stamens of another; and thus the flowers become fertilised, and the fruit will “set” naturally. Our melon-growers, however, rarely trust to