For a succession or long-continued crop, plant a few hills in rich moist land about the last of May.  The young plants always run a gauntlet of insects, and a little striped bug is usually their most deadly enemy.  These bugs often appear to come suddenly in swarms, and devour everything before you are aware of their presence.  With great vigilance they may be kept off by hand, for their stay is brief.  I would advise one trial of a solution of white hellebore, a tablespoonful to a pail of water.  Paris green—­ in solution, of course—­kills them; but unless it is very weak, it will kill or stunt the plants also.  My musk and watermelons were watered by too strong a solution of Paris green this year, and they never recovered from it.  Perhaps the best preventive is to plant so much seed, and to plant over so often, that although the insects do their worst, plenty of good plants survive.  This has usually been my method.  When the striped bug disappears, and the plants are four or five inches high, I thin out to four plants in the hill.  When they come into bearing, pick off all the fruit fit for use, whether you want it or not.  If many are allowed to become yellow and go to seed, the growth and productiveness of the vines are checked.  The Early White Spine and Extra Long White Spine are all the varieties needed for the table.  For pickling purposes plant the Green Prolific on moist rich land.  The other varieties answer quite as well, if picked before they are too large.

The cultivation of the squash is substantially the same as that of the cucumber, and it has nearly the same enemies to contend with.  Let the hills of the bush sorts be four feet apart each way, and eight feet for the running varieties.  The seed is cheap, so use plenty, and plant over from the first to the twenty-fifth of May, until you have three good strong plants to the hill.  Three are plenty, so thin out the plants, when six or seven inches high, to this number, and keep the ground clean and mellow.  I usually raise my running squashes among the corn, giving up one hill to them completely every seven or eight feet each way.  Early bush sorts:  White Bush Scalloped, Yellow Bush Scalloped.  The Perfect Gem is good for both summer and winter, and should be planted on rich soil, six feet apart each way.  The Boston Marrow is one of the best fall sorts; the Hubbard and Marblehead are the best winter varieties.

When we come to plant musk-melons we must keep them well away from the two above-named vegetables, or else their pollen will mix, producing very disagreeable hybrids.  A squash is very good in its way, and a melon is much better; but if you grow them so near each other that they become “’alf and ’alf,” you may perhaps find pigs that will eat them.  The more completely the melon-patch is by itself, the better, and the nearer the house the better; for while it is liable to all the insects and diseases which attack the cucumber, it encounters, when the fruit is mature, a more fatal enemy in the