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CHAPTER VII. 



FRUITS AND VEGETABLES. 



Fruits. The tropical zone furnishes a very large number 

 of wild fruits to which the late Dr Trimen's judgment that 

 they are edible but not worth eating may in general be 

 applied. At the same time they are by no means usually so 

 inedible as the wild fruits of the north, from which the plum, 

 the apple, the gooseberry, etc. have been produced, and there 

 is consequently reason to hope that in the future we may get 

 some very fine fruits from the tropics, when selection has been 

 properly applied. What has been done in the past with the 

 mango, the pine-apple, the plantain, gives good ground for hope 

 in this respect, the more now that we are beginning, thanks to 

 the work of Mendel, Bateson, and others, to understand the 

 principles upon which to work. 



Though fruit is everywhere cultivated, there is no actual 

 export trade in it except in a few places. Many parts of 

 northern India grow fruit for the Calcutta and other markets, 

 and in Ceylon there is a considerable trade in growing plantains 

 for the towns, but only in the West Indies is there any export 

 trade worth mention, and there chiefly in Jamaica, as the 

 following figures of export in 1902-3 indicate: 



Exports of fruit : 



Jamaica 1,249,544 



Other islands 13,150 



Jamaica Exports : 



Bananas 1,134,750 



Oranges 101,195 



Other fruits 13,599 



Jamaica Export : 



To United States 1,133,362 



Great Britain 98,263 



Elsewhere 17,929 



