MELON(Cucumis Melo, I..), a most polymorphic species of the order Cucurbitaceae, the varieties of which are grouped by Naudin under ten tribes, while several other plants of less known characters probably belong to it. The melon is an annual herb with palmately-lobed leaves, and bears tendrils. 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 Comorin,” where it grows spontaneously, but is cultivated in the temperate and warm regions of the whole world. It is excessively 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 ponderous fruits of the gourd (Cucurbita maxima, I..). The fruit may be 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, however, of all crossings are fertile. As remarkable cases of sudden changes produced by artificially crossing races, Μ. Naudin records that in 1859 the offspring of the wild melons m. sauvage de ΓInde (C. melo agrestis) and m. s. d’Afrique, le petit m. de Figari (C. maculatus?) bore quite different fruits from their parents, the former being ten to twelve times their size, ovoid, white-skinned, more or ...

אבטחים, Numbers xi, 5, a luscious fruit so well known that a description of it would be superfluous. It grows to great perfection, and is highly esteemed in Egypt, especially by the lower class of people, during the hot months. The juice is peculiarly cooling and agreeable in that sultry climate, where it is justly pronounced one of the most delicious refreshments that nature, amidst her constant attention to the wants of man, affords in the season of violent heat. There are varieties of this fruit; but that more particularly referred to in the text must be the water melon. It is cultivated, says Hasselquist, on the banks of the Nile, in the rich clayey earth, which subsides during the inundation. This serves the Egyptians for meat, drink, and physic. It is eaten in abundance during the season, even by the richer sort of people; but the common people, on whom Providence has bestowed nothing but poverty and patience, scarcely eat any thing but these, and account this the best time of the year, as they are obliged to put up with worse fare at other seasons. This fruit sometimes serves them for drink, the juice refreshing these poor creatures, and they have less occasion for water than if they were to live on more substantial food in this burning climate. This well explains the regret expressed by the Israelites for the loss of this fruit, whose pleasant liquor had so often quenched their thirst, and relieved their weariness in their servitude, and which would have been exceedingly grateful in a dry scorching desert.