Let the dung be put together for a week, and lay the same time before it is turned. Be careful that the bottom is dry where the bed is built; raise it with mould or road sand to the height of six or eight inches, and allow the bottom to be eight or nine inches longer and wider than the box, so that when the bed is made, it may be drawn up in a gradual manner to about three or four inches wider than the box, observing at the same time to beat it well down with a fork. Let it be about three feet nine inches at the back by three feet six inches in the front; should there, however, happen to be a scarcity of dung, a foot of strawberry or asparagus halm, fagots, or pieces of wood, or, indeed, some of each, may be added at the bottom of the bed. If the dung is dry, apply water to it, that it may be properly moistened; and after the bed is formed, let it be again watered, as the plants will not thrive so well, nor the linings have the proper effect, if the bed is kept too dry. The bed should be made three weeks or a month before the plants are put into it, and must be perfectly sweet before they are ridged out. When the bed is in a proper condition, hollow it out in the middle to the depth of four inches, and put a large barrow-fall of mould to each hill, pressing it down close with the hand about a foot deep. The day before you intend to ridge out, put a pot of plants in the bed, to prove whether it is sweet, which, if you ascertain to be the case, and the box is large, ridge them out, three plants to a light; but if small two will be sufficient. The proper time to sow the seed for an early crop is about the middle of January; and the early cucumber bed will do very well for the purpose. Those sown at this time will be fit to cut in the first or second week of May; but if there is no particular necessity for fruit so early, the beginning of February is a preferable season to sow, when they will be ready to cut by the latter end of May or the beginning of June. The Early Cantaloupe is the best sort for an early crop. Let them be sown in leaf mould, about eighteen or twenty seeds in a forty-eight size pot; immediately apply water, and plunge the pots in a good sharp heat. As soon as the seed makes its appearance, which will be in the course of about three days, if it is good, un-plunge the pots and give them a little water. In two or three days more they will be fit to pot off, which ought always to be done when about a week old, as they strike much more freely when potted off young. Let the soil for potting off the plants be half leaf mould, and half light loam or bog earth.