June 2, 1884.] 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST, 



now imposed, while others could stand very little or none, 

 and other industries ivill, doubtless, have to be killed before 

 the wiseacres at Washington will heed the advice, and 

 profit by the practical experience of the merchants and 

 macufactvirers of this country. — Independent Record. 



A CHAT ABOUT CEYLON FRUITS. 

 Many, and widely spread over the leng1;h and breadth of 

 Ceylon, as aru its indigenous, its introduced and acclimatised 

 fruits — highly salutary, too, as they are acknowledged to 

 be in the dietary, both of the European and the native 

 mhabitants — it is remarkable that, owing to an almost total 

 neglect of cultme, even of the roughest kind, how poor 

 in size and coarse in quality they are mostly found to be, 

 and how very badly they compare with the same fruits 

 grown in other tropical latitudes even less favourable to 

 their habits and idiosyncracies. The Pine-apple of Ceylon, 

 e.^cept we can manage to secure it from thebotanical gardens 

 near Kaudy, or from some experienced cultivator, is as a 

 rule a hard, skinny, tough, and sour production vastly below 

 that same Ananas of the West Indies, the Bahamas, the 

 ".^y^'*® Man's Grav£" in Africa, and other places we have 

 visited. The very "first chop" Mango, which the lowcoun- 

 try Sinhalese or the Kandyan grower will bring to market, 

 is, in one word, trash, as compared to the large yellow 

 fleshy Bombay fruit overflowing with luscious juice, or even 

 with the smaller but equally delectable "No. 11" of Jam- 

 aica, and when you find a Ceylon maugo quite free from 

 stringy fibre and without the smell and the taste of tur- 

 pentine more or less strong, make a gustatory note of it 

 — it is a vara axis of its kind. At .Jatlua, in the Northern 

 Province of the ielnnd we are dealing with, and there only 

 from the garden of the late Mr. Dyke— an expert in horti- 

 culture — have we ever tasted JNIangoes worthy of the name. 

 The Pummelow. or Shaddock (Citrus decumana), that can- 

 non-ball sort of an orange which now-a-days we so fre- 

 quently see in the windows of our fruiterers' shops, when 

 gi-own in the West Indies is a tcii.Ier fleshy fruit, a regular 

 hoiifie houche, over-runni)ig with an abundant sub-acid re- 

 freshing juice, delicious to revel in when fevered. But if 

 we happen to meet this fame Brobdinguagiau Orange in 

 Colombo, Kan<ly, Trincomalee, or elsewhere in Serendib 

 (the old name for Ceylon) — and meet it we are sure to do, 

 for it is common enough— c«re, for ninety-nine times out 

 of every hundred it is a caunoi;-haU outside and a cannon- 

 ball within, the pulp contained in its closely packed tough, 

 leathery sections, being hard, bitter, and as dry as a boue. 

 And apropos of the Orange it.self, how seldom does the 

 thirst3 traveller get one as succulent, .sweet, and refresh- 

 ing as those grown in other of then- well-known habitats, 

 even though he, the traveller, tramp all over the island for 

 the cooling fruit. The Ceylon Orange tree is a deception 

 and a snare. It blossoms as sweetly, it bears as freely, 

 its product is as enticing to the eye as any of its species 

 anj-where, but barring the Mandarin and one other variety 

 which now and again literally and metaphorically crop up, 

 the ordinary native-grown fruit is an Orange by name only 

 — vox et prtFttna nihil. Better to call it the " sweet lime," 

 and by which appellation indeed it is sometimes known. 



Alas ! that in our chat anent the fruits of " the spicy 

 isle," where, according to Bishop Heber, " man alone is 

 \nle," we .should still continue to disparage, but in truth 

 the Tamarind and the Lime, the Guava— that emperor of 

 fruits, for its tooth-some jelly, and "do/ce" of the M'est 

 Indies— the Cashew (Anacardium occidentale), who does not 

 know the kirnol of its roasted uut as an after-dinner wine 

 fiavoureri' The Papaw (Oarica papaya) and the Plantain— 

 we are enumerating the commoner fruits found in almost 

 every native's garden— are very much below par with those 

 same flourishing wild around the hut of any West Indian 

 or African negro. 



Space is wanting tor our specifying in what particular 

 characteristics the diiferences between the fruits we have 

 alluded to exist, but, nevertheless, our statement may be 

 accepted as fact — " 'Tis true, 'tis pity, and pity 'tis 'tis true." 



And now, if we take a very rajjid glance at two or tbn-e 

 of the fruits which are less common, and upon which some 

 horticultural pains have been bestowed, or they would not 

 be there at all, we shall yet see that these, too, fall far 

 short of the cvery-day quality of their kinds in other lands. 

 The Avocado Pear (Persea gratiseima), the Subalterns 



I Butter of the West, is here in the East a smaller, harder, 

 I less buttery, thicker-skinned, and more stony production. 

 I The Custard Apple (Anona reticulata) is the worst of its 

 kind we have ever eaten or tried to eat in " all our walks 

 abroad." The Anona squamosa (Sweetsop) and the A. mur- 

 icata (Soursop) are wretched, sapless, " cottony " imit- 

 ations of their saccharine and juicy fraternity in Jamaica. 

 And as for the Grenadilla (Passiflora quadrangularis) — I 

 had a vine of the plant growing iu the compound (yard) 

 of my quarters in a certain up-country station ; I treated 

 the sparse but yet white jelly-like contents of the soft 

 green capsules as systematically as I had seen them treated 

 and enjoyed them in other tropical climates, but I could 

 never get rid of a sort of uncanny twang — spice, wine, 

 and sugar the stuff as much as I pleased. 



From the remarks I have made it can be quite under- 

 stood that a dessert table in Ceylon spread with its fruits, 

 decorated with its brilliant many-hued flowers, aud adorned 

 artistically with leaves and the ivory-hke spray blossoms 

 of the Coconut Palm, which latter the Sinhalese or Tamil 

 never omits to use liberally, is, indeed, an attractive picture 

 to look upon — very! but it is eye-taking to the guests, 

 and that only, for save and except certiun dainty dishes 

 of fruits, to be spoken about, be included, the whole col- 

 lection, from the aristocratic Pine to the plebeian Plantain 

 will be left untouched. And why this? Because, as we 

 said at starting, even the most rude, haphazard cultivation 

 has been pertinaciously neglected. The tree once planted 

 must take care of itself, to bear, or not to bear, as Heaven 

 chooses. And this laisse:-allei' sort of unconcern is some- 

 what remarkable too — at least, among the natives, who are 

 Buddhists iu religion, for their sacred books tell them, and 

 Gotaraa Buddha, their high priest in Ci.-ylon, encouraged 

 them to plant fruit trees in highways and byeways for the 

 use of all itinerants — to plant unquestionably, say they — 

 but never a word of tending they add. 



Just now we wrote that if certain fruits happen to lie 

 upon the dessert-table they were sure to find favour in 

 the mouths of the epicurean guests. J rinin.s ante et inter 

 omnes will .be the Mangosteen, that most delectable of 

 all Eastern fruits, and which Sir Emerson Tenneut lauds 

 as iu delicacy rosembhng " perfumed snow." Be certain if 

 host or hostess has got for love or money Mangosteens they 

 will be pounced upon and devoured. Some of our readers 

 may not know this, the alpha of fructareous edibles. It is 

 the fruit of the Garciniamaugostana, natural order Guttifera;, 

 a native of Java, the Straits of Malacca, and the whole 

 archipelago thereabouts, but introduced and cultivated sparse- 

 ly — alas ! sparsely — in Ceylon. It is about the size of a 

 smaU Orange, purjiUsL-black in colour when quite ripe — if 

 any one has seen the Star Apple, Ohiysophyllum Oainito 

 of the West Indies he may form a very good idea of its 

 appearance — and three-celled, each cell containing a seed 

 tliickly enveloped with a pure white pulp of exquisite odour, 

 and a taste entirely its own. We have eaten a vast number 

 of the fruits of the tropics and known not one which at all 

 resembles it. Some say the Sapodilla — credat Jnd(rus. 



Another fruit which treads closely upon the heels of the 

 Mangosteen is the Kambutan (Nephelium Lappaceum), of 

 the Sapiudaceaj or Soapwort tribe. It is about the size of 

 a large Date, oblong or roundish in shape, grows in thick 

 clusters on the tree, and consists of a seed stone, covered 

 with a white pulpy substance within a fibro-elastic capsule, 

 reddish-brown iu colour, and from which many soft, long 

 spicuUe or points spring. When this indiarubber-hke capsule 

 is bitten through, the seed has a great tendency to be for- 

 cibly ejected, and we have seen it thus catapulted into a 

 neighbour's face. 



If the eater can get over the highly otfensive civet-like 

 smell of the Dm-ian (Durio zibethinus, nat. older Sterculiaceas) 

 — but it requires much nerve to do so — there is hardly a 

 greater treat in Ceylon than this fruit. The real Durian is 

 not iudigenous to the island ; it comes from the same locaUties 

 as the Mangosteen, and was introduced by the Portuguese 

 in the sixteenth century, but it has another and more 

 odoriferous brother, the Stercuha fcetiibi, to which the 

 name of Sinhalese Durian has been ajiplied. And now 

 that we think of it, the Mangosteen has a very near re- 

 lation in the Goorka. found wild in the jungles, uneatable 

 save by the not-over-particular native. The despised and 

 rejected by Europeans, Jak (Artocarpus integrifoHa) is by 

 no means as bad as it is made to be, bar again the effluvium 



