The Portland daily press., 1893-08-28
been broken!"

been broken!'
It is fact that melons are SO cheap
and plentiful in their season nowadays
even as far away from the fields they are
grown in as New York, that they are
handled without much care. The melon
of precious memory has been displaced
by the melon of commerce. It CRATES
upon the sensitive soul to see them in
such quantities, but there is this saving
truth for consolation: The melon of
commerce is better than the melons of
precious Memory used to be, for the re-
sources of science have been called in to
assist in developing the fruit.
The present plenitude of melons is
due to the transportation companies.
When the railroads had gridironed the
south, their managers began to cast
about for freight to carry. Then they
thought Of the melons-rich, big, juber
ous-wasting in the south, and the
mouths longing, hungry, watering for
them in the north. So the railroad men
shipped few carloads, but the fruit
was too tender to bear the long ride by
Tail duu Uc1I OlCl 11CtOllc tlc4 ~ 10 S04O1-
waited. Then the planters had to be
taught how to crate the melons, and then
the markets had to be organized in the
northern cities. When this was all done,
dollars came rolling into the pockets of
the men who had done it, and melons
are now shipped in enormous quantities
to every big city in the country, river
and coasting steamers and schooners be-
ing pressed into the service as well as
the railroads.
It would be hopeless task to try to
figure up how many men, women and
children reap financial reward from the
cultivation of and trade in melons. The
st. Louis savant who has made study
of the matter shows conclusively that
money made from melons is factor in
the pockets Of stockholders in almost all
the railroad and steamboat lines, and
that when these individuals go abroad
they spend some of that money there,
tistics are sometimes a vain thing any
way, but it has interested me to learn
that this seasons shipments from south
west Georgia alone will aggregate 5000
carloads and that melons from that re-
gion go to 1874 different points, the states
farthest west being the only ones not
taking them. 1t is expected that the en-
tire state of Georgia will put out about
1900 carloads this year, and that a round
million of dollars will be paid in return
for them to the growers and the rail
roads. Of the cities New York eats
most melons, next comes Chicago, then
Cincinnati, then Boston, Philadelphia
Baltimore, st. Louis, Minneapolis and
SO on down in the order named.
It should not be understood that Geor-
gia is the only state raising melons in
quantities. They are grown in the Caro-
linas and in Florida, in Tennessee and in
Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, Ohio,
Indiana, Illinois and New York On the
Pacific coast they are plentiful in south
srn California.
It is the exceeding Righteousness of the
watermelon that has rendered possible
those refined entertainments known as
ssmillion matches" wherein two indi-
viduals Of color pit against each other
the capacity Of their stomachs and the
sapidity of their jaws 'sfor the collec-
ton" They have not been SO frequent
in New York Of late years as they were
in the days when certain Journalists"
used to organize them for the benefit of
their friends or to make sales for news
paper stories describing them.
It is held by students of the water
melon that each district produces diff
ferent variety of melon, but I cannot
vouch for this. After the Georgia crop
comes that from the Carolinas, and then
the Virginia Snd the New Jersey crops.
And there is something about all of these
melons that like. I. D. MARSHALL.