278 Fru its and Fru it- Trees. 



in tropical South America, especially Guiana and Brazil, 

 where it occupies very large areas, preferring hot plains 

 in situations fully exposed to the blaze of the sun. Long 

 since conveyed to tropical Asia by the Portuguese, it is 

 now naturalized in the forests of British India. The name 

 is of Brazilian origin, as indicated by Piso and other 

 early travellers in South America. In Jamaica it is 

 pronounced kushoo. 



The leaves of the Anacardium are alternate, several 

 inches long, oval, obtuse, and entire ; the flowers, borne 

 in panicles, are rose-coloured and fragrant, small, but very 

 pretty ; the pedicels of a portion of them, as soon as the 

 flowering is over, swell in a manner so remarkable that, 

 excepting in the somewhat analogous expansion of the 

 torus of the strawberry, they seem, in this respect, to have 

 no parallel in nature. They assume the figure and 

 dimensions of a small pear, the skin acquiring a fine 

 crimson or yellow colour ; the ovary, meanwhile, ripens 

 into a kidney-shaped " nut," an inch or more in length, 

 nearly as broad, somewhat compressed, ashy-grey, smooth 

 and polished, and which stands on end, as it were, upon 

 the summit of the pear. The shell is thin; below it there 

 is a layer of viscid oil, intensely caustic, and so highly 

 inflammable that when a cashew-nut is held by means of 

 a fork, in a candle-flame, it very soon ignites and burns 

 furiously, fire jutting out spasmodically in all directions. 

 The burning roasts the kernel, the flavour of which is 

 then very agreeable, though somewhat pungent, and 

 recommends it for use in the manufacture of chocolate, 



