PINEAPPLES. 227 



flavour of the tropical grown orange cannot compare 

 with that of the best oranges grown at places within 

 the warmer regions of the temperate zone, as for instance 

 at St. Michael's, or in Morocco, Tripoli, and other 

 places in Northern Africa, and in some parts of Asia 

 Minor; grown in hot districts, such as Ceylon, for 

 instance, the orange becomes evergreen, the fruit is 

 green even when perfectly ripe, but its excellence is 

 gone, and it is an acrid and degenerate member of a 

 noble family of fruits. 



On the other hand, there are many undoubtedly 

 delicious fruits of tropical origin. Of these we may 

 take the pineapple (Ananas Sativd] as a leading 

 example. Now this splendid fruit is strictly a habitant 

 of the very hottest and dampest regions of the equa- 

 torial zone. There only, beneath the incandescent rays 

 of a vertical sun, will it flourish in its best and highest 

 flavoured form though it will, as we know, grow in 

 drier localities, where a less high and equable tem- 

 perature is found; but if so it proves of indifferent 

 flavour, and it is to this that we attribute the low estimate 

 which the pineapple appears to possess in the opinion 

 of London gourmands. With the exception of a 

 few stove-house pines, grown at great expense, very 

 little good fruit of this kind ever appear in the London 

 market. To know what the pineapple is, when grown 

 in perfection, one should taste one grown in the hot 

 regions of Brazil, where certainly the finest pines we have 

 ever eaten were produced. Very few good pineapples 

 are grown in Ceylon and other parts of our tropical 

 possessions in the East, because the varieties there cul- 

 tivated are many of them of an inferior and even 

 worthless description. A radical change in these matters 



