28 



THE CUBA REVIEW 



AGRICULTURAL MATTERS. 



A Celebrated and Valuable Animal— The Aguacate, One of the Most DeUcate 



Fruits — Papaws and Chickens, 



AUrcides Julip's Pietertje's Paul, No. 29830. 



Courtesy of Collier's Weekly. 



A High Priced Animal. 



Collier's Weekly finds the animal pic- 

 tured above celebrated and his record 

 impressive. He has thirty-two daugh- 

 ters of A. R. O. (Advanced Registry Of- 

 ficial), which corresponds in the bovines 

 to the two-minute class in race horses, 

 and a son with fourteen daughters in this 

 coveted division. He is the cousin of 

 Colantha and is held at $20,000. He is 

 great not in himself alone, but in those 

 who are to uphold his name and glory 

 after him— $10,000 has been offered for 

 one of his sons. Paul himself weighs a 

 ton and a quarter. 



The Aquacate Easily Damaged. 



The great susceptibility of aquacates 

 to damage by bruising is a great ob- 

 stacle in the way of building up an 

 export trade. It is undoubtedly one of 

 the most delicate of West Indian fruits 

 and it is necessary to use the greatest 

 care in gathering and handling it. The 

 slightest bruise is sufficient to cause the 

 pear to rot in a very short time; indeed, 

 it is often much bruised by its own seed 

 if carelessly shaken. 



Nevertheless it is possible to ship 

 avocados successfully for very consid- 

 erable distances, if due care is exercised 

 in gathering, packing, etc. West Indian 

 pears have been exported in small quan- 

 tity to New York and to England, and 

 experimental shipments from the Ha- 

 waiian Islands to the Pacific Coast of 



the United States gave satisfactory re- 

 sults. Cases in which avocados are 

 packed for transport should be small in 

 size and contain but few fruits. The 

 crate found most satisfactory in _ the 

 Hawaiian experiments (with medium- 

 sized fruits) was of the following dimen- 

 sions, inside measurement: 13x14x3^ 

 inches. This crate contained about one 

 dozen fruits, necessarily in a single layer, 

 the fruits being merely wrapped in a 

 single paper cover. 



With most other fruits, the vegetative 

 method of propagation is to be recom- 

 mended in preference. Budding has 

 proved very successful with this tree, the 

 simplest form of the operation — that 

 known as shield budding — being the best 

 to employ with the avocado. — Agricul- 

 tural News, Barbados. 



The Papaw, 



Papaw trees have usually male and 

 female flowers on separate trees. A 

 paper in "Science," by an officer con- 

 nected with the Porto Rico Experiment 

 Station, reports a change of sex observed 

 in some papaw trees there, brought about 

 apparently by removing the terminal bud. 

 A tree which had previously borne male 

 flowers only, had its terminal bud in- 

 jured, and shortly afterwards was noticed 

 to bear female flowers also. These flow- 

 ers set and yielded fruit, and this was 

 repeated in the second year. 



