CANNON-BALL TREE. 115 



short prickly pendent branchlets, whicli roll outward, and 

 then down, and then up again in graceful curves, and carry 

 large pale crimson flowers, each with a pink hood in the 

 middle, looking like a new-born baby's fist. Those flowers, 

 when torn, turn blue on exposure to the light ; and wdien 

 they fall, leave behind them the cannon-ball, a rough brown 

 globe, as big as a thirty-two-pound shot, which you must get 

 down W'ith a certain caution, lest that befal you which befel 

 a certain gallant officer on the mainland of America. For, 

 fired with a post-prandial ambition to obtain a cannon-ball, 

 he took to himself a long bamboo, and poked at the tree. 

 He succeeded : but not altogether as he had hoped. For the 

 cannon-ball, in coming down, avenged itself by dropping 

 exactly on the bridge of his nose, felling him to the ground, 

 and giving him such a pair of black eyes that he was not 

 seen on parade for a fortnight. 



The pulp of this Cannon-ball is, they say, " vinous and 

 pleasant " wdien fresh ; but those who are mindful ' of what 

 befel our forefather Adam from eating strange fruits, will 

 avoid it, as they will many more fruits eaten in the Tropics, 

 but digestible only by the dura ilia of Indians and Negros. 

 Whatever virtue it may have when fresh, it begins, as soon 

 as stale, to give out an odour too abominable to be even 

 recollected w^ith comfort. 



More useful, and the fruit of an even grander tree, are 



I 2 



