round the stem gives warning that the fruit should be cut and placed in the fruit room for a few days to complete the ripening for the table.  In houses of the kind described Melons and Cucumbers are occasionally grown together.  But although this may be done, and there are many cultivators expert in the business, the practice cannot be recommended, for ships that sail near the wind will come to grief some day.  The moisture and partial shade that suit the Cucumber do not suit the Melon, and it is a poor compromise to make one end of the house shady and moist, and the other end sunny and dry, to establish different conditions with one atmosphere.  A glass partition pretty well disposes of the difficulty, because it is then possible to insure two atmospheres suitable for two different operations. (=See also pages 157, 175, and 184.=)

==The Pollination of Melons== is performed by plucking the mature male blooms, and after the removal of the petals, transferring the pollen of the male flower to the stigma of the female flower.

==Mercury==

==Chenopodium Bonus-Henricus==

This perfectly hardy vegetable, known also by the name of Good King Henry, is much grown in Lincolnshire.  The leaves are used in the same way as Spinach, and by earthing up the shoots they may be blanched as a substitute for Asparagus.  Sow the seeds during April in drills twelve inches apart, and in due course thin the seedlings to one foot apart in the rows.

==Mushroom==

==Agaricus campestris==

The Mushroom has many friends among all classes, few benevolent neutrals, and fewer still who are absolutely hostile to it as an article of food.  Those who find, or imagine they find, that this delicacy does not agree with them, might possibly arrive at another conclusion were a different mode of preparation adopted, or were the consumption of it accompanied with a full persuasion that the Mushroom is not merely delicious in flavour, but thoroughly wholesome, rich in flesh-forming constituents, and, for a vegetable, possessed of more than the average proportion of fat-formers and minerals.  These facts have been clearly established by chemical analysis, and may dispose of timid misgivings, always supposing the true edible Mushroom, =Agaricus campestris=, to be in question.

Hitherto the artificial production of Mushrooms has never been equal to the demand.  Notwithstanding the enormous quantities sent to Covent Garden by the growers around London, many tons are imported from France, although it is generally admitted that they are neither so fine nor so rich in flavour as those produced in this country.  If, however, the large centres of population are inadequately supplied, the scarcity of Mushrooms is more keenly felt in the provinces, except, perhaps, in certain favoured districts, where, after a few warm days in autumn, an abundant crop may be gathered from the neighbouring pastures.