92 AGRICULTURE IN THE TROPICS [PT. II 



soils it has reached a weight of 23J Ibs., with an excellent 

 flavour. 



The mango (Mangifera indica) is of course an Indian fruit, 

 and the really delicately flavoured mangoes can as a rule only be 

 got in a few favoured places in India, but of late the fruit has 

 been grown in the West Indies, and a few have been sold in 

 London and elsewhere. A small trade also goes on between 

 Bombay and London in the same fruit. The chief difficulty is 

 the packing of the very rich and juicy fruit to stand the long 

 voyage, and probably this will for some time stand in the way of 

 introducing really good mangoes to Europe. 



As cultivated from time immemorial in the east, the mango 

 is one of the commonest fruits, and occurs in perhaps as many 

 as 100 varieties. Of these only a few are really good to the 

 European taste, most of them having about them more or less 

 of the stringiness and flavour of the wild mango, which made 

 some one describe the fruit as tasting like a ball of cotton dipped 

 in turpentine. The differences between these varieties are 

 perhaps greater than in almost any other fruit, and no two 

 fruits could be imagined more distinct in look and even in 

 taste than the little red " plum " mangoes which look just 

 like Victoria plums, and the large green " rupee " mangoes 

 weighing many pounds each. 



The exquisite taste of a really good mango, as one may at 

 times get it in Bombay or Poona, is a revelation, and it is much 

 to be desired that this fruit should appear in European com- 

 merce in really good condition. 



The mango is usually cultivated casually among other trees 

 in the common mixed cultivation of native gardens, but in some 

 places, especially in Western India, there are real orchards of 

 nothing but mangoes, the trees growing to about 30 feet in 

 height. These orchards are very carefully tended, and contain 

 nothing but the best varieties, carefully grafted on to hardy 

 stocks. 



The orange (Citrus Aurantium) though of course really a 

 sub-tropical cultivation, is another fruit very largely cultivated 

 throughout the tropics, but is only exported from the West 

 Indies, where the industry has grown to considerable size. 



