Tropical Fruits. 9 



picturesque books of Eastern travel ever printed, " while 

 staying at Damascus, I made my luncheon."* The 

 botanical fruits also include various esculents commonly 

 counted with the " vegetables," as kidney-beans, marrows, 

 cucumbers, tomatoes, aubergines; with certain spices and 

 condiments, as capsicums, pepper-corns, pimento, and 

 vanilla-pods. 



Confining the term to fruits commonly so understood, 

 the total number in the whole world is small in propor- 

 tion to the entire number of different flowering-plants. 

 Probably the total is about five hundred. Many are 

 peculiar to tropical countries, as the mango, the mango- 

 steen, the durion, the papaw, the sour-sop, the sweet-sop, 

 the mammee, the anchovy-pear, the alligator-pear, the 

 cherimoyer, the rose-apple, the bread-fruit, the guava, 

 the carambola. Of these we never see examples in 

 England (though a few may now and then be ripened 

 in some choice hothouse), because too perishable to be 

 conveyed across the water. Others belonging to sub- 

 tropical and the warmer temperate countries, though 

 staples or favourites at home, are equally unknown in 

 England, for various reasons easily conjectured, such as 

 the water-chestnut of the south of Europe, the famous 

 nelumbo-seeds of Asia, the Moreton Bay chestnut, the 

 May-apple of North America, and the kei-apple of Natal. 

 In England, of indigenous fruits, growing wild and col- 

 lected for market, we have six or seven the blackberry, 

 the cranberry, the whortle-berry, the elder-berry, the 



* "Egyptian Sepulchres and Syrian Shrines," 1861, p. 318. 

 C 



