264 OUR COMMON FBUITS. 



tion ; when steaks beside the very gridiron shall be insipid, 

 and whitebait be flavourless even at Black wall ; when not 

 even the nearest murmur of the stream whence it was 

 drawn can give savour to Scotland's trout, and the efful- 

 gence of Italy's sunshine fails to gild Neapolitan mac- 

 caroni with a relish ; even then the world holds still one 

 charm untried, and it cannot be said that all life's plea- 

 sures are exhausted while a voyage to Cuba may secure, 

 in the fragrant bowers of the " lone star of the sea," the 

 yet unknown felicity of tasting a perfect pine ! 



Should dull imagination be able but faintly to conceive 

 the bliss, it may be aided by that unsurpassable descrip- 

 tion of one of our early voyagers, which caused poor 

 Evelyn such woeful disappointment, when not even the 

 touch of royal fingers could impart to the morsel vouch- 

 safed him of a long-kept sea-spoiled import more than 

 the mere ghost of a flavour thus glowingly depicted. An 

 old writer had already observed that the Ananas was " a 

 fruit of such excellence that the gods might luxuriate upon 

 it, and which should only be gathered by the hand of a 

 Venus ; " but this is mere vague panegyric. The worthy 

 Captain Ligon tries to tell in what this excellence consists, 

 and not quite in vain, for surely if words can convey the 

 idea of a taste these do so. " Now," says he, " to close up 

 all that can be said of fruits, I must name the pine, for in 

 that single name all that is excellent in a superlative de- 

 gree for beauty and taste is totally and summarily in- 

 cluded. When it comes to be eaten, nothing of rare taste 

 can be thought on that is not there, nor is it imaginable 

 that so full a harmony of tastes can be raised out of so 

 many parts, and all distinguishable. When you bite a 

 piece of the fruit it is so violently sharp as you would 

 think it would fetch all the skin off your mouth, but 

 before your tongue have made a second tryal, upon your 

 palate you shall perceive such a sweetnesse to follow as 

 perfectly to cure that vigorous sharpness ; and between 

 these two extremes of sharp and sweet lies the relish and 

 flavour of all fruits that are excellent : and those tastes 

 will change and flow so fast upon your palate as your 

 fancy can hardly keep way with them, to distinguish the 



