its taste somewhat resembling butter or marrow, and hence 
is called the “vegetable marrow :”’ and this is so rich and mild 
that most people make use of some spice or pungent substance 
to give it poignancy: and wine, sugar, lime-juice, but mostly 
pepper and salt, are used. However excellent when ripe, the 
Avocado is very dangerous if pulled and eaten before maturity ; 
being known to produce fever and dysentery. “If you take 
the stone of the seed,” says Barham, “and write upon’a white 
wall, the letters will turn as red as blood, and never go out 
till the wall is white-washed again, and then with difficulty.” 
Descr. This éree attains a moderate size, with a straight 
trunk and rough bark, handsome in full leaf. Leaves alternate, 
deciduous in our stove (and when bare of leaves or nearly so, 
in the present instance in February, is the season when it bore 
flowers), four to six inches long, ovate or oval or oblongo-ob- 
ovate, with a short acumen, moderately tapering below into a 
Jootstalk about three-fourths of an inch long; the substance is 
between chartaceous and coriaceous, pinnately veined, glabrous 
above, more or less downy beneath, the margin quite entire. 
Clusters of flowers from the axils of the upper leaves or of the 
cicatrices of the leaves, peduncled. Pedicels short. Perianth 
rather small, green, downy, sexpartite : segments oval, spreading. 
Stamens nine, nearly as long as the calyx: filaments woolly ; 
anthers four-celled. The inner stamens have two capitate glands 
at the base of each. Staminodia three, resembling abortive 
stamens. Ovary downy, tapering into the style. Stigma obtuse. 
fruit the size and shape of an ordinary pear, very pulpy, con- 
taining one large seed in the soft butyraceous pulp, ovate, its 
mtegument crustaceous. A/bumen none. Embryo conform to 
the seed. Cotyledons very large. W. J. H. 
Curt. The Alligator Pear is extensively cultivated in the West 
Indies, especially in Jamaica. It does not appear to require any 
peculiar soil; the specimens imported we have observed to have 
been growing in earth of a stiff clayey nature. It needs to be 
grown in a warm and moist stove: it grows freely in light loam, 
but care must be taken to have it well drained and not to over- 
water it, particularly in winter, as_the roots, being of a succulent 
nature, are easily injured by any great and prolonged excess of 
moisture, especially during the period when the plant is not in 
an active state of growth; even in its state of greatest vigour 
it takes up water very sparingly. It is increased by cuttin » 
treated in the usual way. J. ee ee 
Fig. 1. Flower. 2. Stamen with glands, and a staminodium. 3. Pistil:— 
magnified. 4. Fruit (taken from Geertner, and coloured from Tussac) :—aatural 
size. 5. Transverse section of the same, showing the seed :—natural size. 
