M. J. C. DE MELLO AKD ME. B. SPEUCE ON PAPATACE-S:. 9. 



tas reached the height of a man, put forth from one to as many 

 as six branches — not spreading nor bent back, but straight and 

 nearly as long as a lance, or sometimes twice that length. 



" These straight shoots or branches bear at the top 



several stout leaves of a pleasant green, two spans or more broad, 

 on stalks three or even six spans long. The trees bear fruit 

 until they are five or six years old ; but it grows smaller every 

 year, and in the sixth year it is worthless. The figs ripen on the 



T 



tree, not all at a time, but one by one ; so that when the lowest is 



ripe and yellow like wax, the others are still green and hard." 



He concludes his account by saying that there are two kinds of 



these Fig-trees^ one of which has long, and the other, round fruit, 



although in the taste and everything else they are exactly 



alike. 



What is this other kind " with round fr-uit," barely mentioned 



by Oviedo, but described by Eochefort Q Histoire Naturelle des 

 lies Antilles,' 2^ ed. Eotterdam, 1GG5), and figured by him at 

 p. 66, as a tree as stout as G. papaya^ but with much smaller 

 leaves " divisees en trois pointes " not ujalike those of the Tig, 

 and with roundish fruits, which, he says, are the size of a pear ? 

 On p. 67 is a figure of C, papaya, with its characteristic large 

 deeply palmatifid thin inciso-pinnatifid leaves, and elongate-ob- 

 ovoid fruit, " de la grosseur d'un melon, et de la figure d'une 

 mammelle, d'ou vient que les Portugais Tont nomme Mamao^^ 

 looking very distinct from the former, and said to be a much 

 finer fruit. It is singular that our modern works contain no 

 description which can be safely referred to this strongly marked 

 trifid-leaved species from Martinique, Guadeloupe, and other of 

 the Antilles 3 and I commend it for investigation to travellers and 

 residents in those islands. 



The ease with which the Papaw is cultivated, and the beauty and 

 singularity of its aspect, have conduced — more perhaps than its 

 large, luscious, but unsubstantial fruit — to render it a denizen of 

 every warm country in the world. The fruit, although lightly 

 esteemed by those who are new to it, is one of the most whole- 

 some of tropical fruits. In South America it is eaten less as a 

 dessert fruit than as a "fresco," or grateful "cooler," in the heat 

 of the day, like water-melons and chirimoyas. It varies in flavour 

 in different localities, being very insipid in some, but in others 

 very sweet, as in the coast-valleys of Northern Peru. At Gua- 

 yaquil the perfectly ripe fr'uit is still so milky that, after having 

 been sliced and the seeds cleared out, it is usually put in water 



