306 The Gardens of the Sun. [ch. xv. 



prevented; and as to their preservation in the form of 

 candied confections or "jam" no one seems to have 

 taken up the matter. Fancy a conserve of snowy mango- 

 steen pulp, preserved mangoes, candied rambutan, or 

 banana marmalade. The late Dr. Lindley once said, in 

 his usual incisive way, that " most tropical fruits were 

 edible," but that "very few were worth eating;" but 

 then the probabilit}- is he had never tasted a mango or a 

 mangosteen, a tarippe fruit, or the deliciously rich apricot- 

 like pulp which surrounds the seeds of the caoutchouc- 

 }-ielding willughbeias, and certainly not a durian. 



The mangoes, oranges, bananas, pomoloes, and pine- 

 apples are all cultivated fruits in the East, just as are our 

 best gooseberries, strawberries, apples, pears, and grapes 

 at home ; but on the other hand we have no wild fruits 

 which can in any way be compared with the durian, 

 jintawan, langsat, trap, tampce, mangosteen, and ram- 

 butan, all of which are more truly wild in the Malay 

 islands than are the so-called wild cherries, gooseberries, 

 currants, and raspberries of our woods. It is to the 

 tropics one must go for a drink of fresh cocoanut milk — 

 a taste of the fascinating durian, for a luscious mango, or 

 the delicious mangosteen ; and while in the matter of 

 flowers our cultivators at home certainly have the advan- 

 tage, in the case of fruits this much can scarcely be said. 



The regal durian (Durio zibethinus), like the finest of 

 nectarines or melting pears, must be eaten fresh and just 

 at one particular point of ripeness, and then it is, as 

 many think, a fruit fit for a king. So highly is this 

 vegetable- custard valued that as much as a dollar each is 

 not unfrequently paid for fine specimens of the first fruits 

 of the durian crop brought into the Eastern markets. It 

 is a universal favourite both with Malays and Chinese, 

 but the opinions of Europeans vary as to the merits of 



