CHAPTEE VI. 



Fruits and Flowers of the Bahamas. Fruit in the Bills of Fare. Special 

 Notice of the OraJirje, the Banana, the Pine Apple, the Sapodilla, the Cocoa- 

 nut, the Hog Plum, the Shaddock, and the Forbidden Fruit. The Flowering 

 Trees, Shrubs and Vines. 



"Pomona bore me to her citron groves, 

 To where the lemon and the piercing lime, 

 With the deep orange glowing through the green, 

 Their varied glories blend."— Thompson. 



"Gorgeous flowrets in the sunlight shining. 

 Blossoms flaunting in the eye of day, 

 Tremulous leaves, with soft and silver lining, 

 Buds that open only to decay." 



Whether we adopt the theory that nature has stocked the 

 earth with hiscioiis fruits for man's benefit, or created man for the 

 benefit of the fruit, and to secure its more perfect development 

 from the sour, crabbed, wild, unseemly, primitive condition, in 

 which, when uncultivated, it exists, avc must admit that fruit is 

 an important, if not an essential factor, in the problem of the 

 health and happiness of the human race. At all stages, and in 

 all conditions of life, man craves and requires the ripened fruits 

 in their season. One of the pleasures incident to visiting foreign 

 lands arises from the opportunity which is thus afforded to pluck 

 and eat them in their freshness and maturity. In these days of 

 rapid transit by sea and land, Avhen the ends and distant corners 

 of the earth are brought together, and space is almost annihilated. 



