ch. xv.] Tropical Fruits. 305 



ago, and the trees introduced to the island of Ceylon, 

 which have succeeded fairly well. Another extremely 

 useful and variable fruit, the banana, is quite commonly 

 ripened in our gardens, and with the pine-apple these 

 may be accounted the only tropical fruits which lend 

 themselves to anything approaching a regular system of 

 successful culture in our hothouses at home. Our ordi- 

 nary cultivated fruits are naturally found in temperate or 

 inter-tropical countries — Europe or the cooler parts of 

 Asia principally ; and of all those cultivated in the open 

 air of Southern Europe, such as the vine, fig, and orange, 

 the latter is the only one which can be induced to prosper 

 in the tropical lowlands of the far East, where its ever- 

 green character enables it to hold its own while its 

 deciduous neighbours seem to fail through over-excite- 

 ment, the loss of their customary winter's sleep. 



On the other hand the pine-apple of South America, 

 the mango of India, and the delicious little Chinese or 

 mandarin orange, here luxuriate in the open air, the 

 mango yielding two crops in twelve months, while fruit of 

 the others may be obtained all the year round. In some 

 favoured districts in Malaya the forests almost become 

 orchards on a large scale, so plentifully are they stocked 

 with durian, baloona, mambangan, varieties of tampoe, 

 luing, and other native fruits, in addition to those 

 already named ; and in many places the pine-apple is so 

 abundantly naturalised as an escape from cultivation that 

 one might almost be led to imagine it indigenous did we 

 not know that, together with the white guava, the papaw, 

 and cashew-nut — a trio forming the "weeds" among 

 tropical fruits — it is a native of the western tropics. So 

 abundant are the crops in some seasons that one cannot 

 help regretting their perishable nature, by reason of 

 which their shipment to Europe in a fresh state is 



