308 Fruits and Fruit- Trees. 



spheres, somewhat flattened at the poles, six feet in 

 circumference, and weighing from a hundred up to a 

 hundred and eighty or ninety pounds, are by no means 

 rare. A pompion exhibited in Paris in the autumn of 

 1884, acknowledged to be the "emperor," weighed a 

 hundred and thirty kilogrammes, or about two hundred 

 and eighty pounds. In conservatories the ornamental 

 cucurbits are, if possible, still more effective, as shown in 

 the water-lily house at Kew, these including the marvel- 

 lous Snake-gourd, six or eight feet long, the Bottle and 

 Trumpet gourds, and the Luffas those which supply 

 us (from Egypt, their native country) with the curious 

 skeletons sold in the apothecaries' shops for use as flesh- 

 brushes. 



Of Decorative or purely ornamental fruits, not escu- 

 lent, though in some cases, perhaps, with latent capacity 

 to be rendered so, the company is large, and, through 

 introduction of curiosities from foreign countries, yearly 

 increasing. Some of them were mentioned on p. 7. It 

 may not be amiss here to indicate a few others as price- 

 less where the conditions are favourable for the ripening, 

 or where fruiting may be induced by skilful treatment. 

 Among trees and shrubs there are none which in their 

 autumnal fruit-richness excel the spindle-trees, the Euony- 

 mus latifolius in particular; the Lycium Barbarum; the 

 common laurustinus, so commended by Ovid;* the 

 Spiraa opulifolia; the Desfontainea spinosa, the scarlet 



* "Et bicolor myrtus, et baccis ccerula tinus." Met. x. 98. 



