GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



315 



Those in the picture are unusually large— that 

 is, the tall ones in the foreground. The great- 

 er part of them are not too high to reach the 

 fruit conveniently, and some of them bear 

 very nice melons before they are as high as 

 your head. After my seasickness on the 

 steamer I was troubled with constipation. I 

 mentioned it to Mr. Morrison, and he told me 

 the island furnished the best remedy in the 

 world, in the shape of a luscious fruit. When 

 I suggested that fruit did not agree with me 

 he said the papaya would agree with anybody 

 — that, in fact, it contained the largest amount 

 of vegetable pepsin of any plant or fruit 

 known. We went over to a neighbor's — a 

 Mr. Baker — who kindly picked off a ripe 

 fruit almost as large as an average-sized pitch- 

 er and gave it to me as a " dose." One of the 

 children brought me a spoon, and I sat down 

 on the grass and enjoyed the " dose " as I 

 never enjoyed any "medicine" before. The 

 fruit looks exactly like a smooth muskmelon. 

 The seeds, however, are very small — not much 

 larger than tomato-seeds. Mr. Baker told me 

 that people who are used to the fruit eat not 

 only the seeds, but the entire inside, not scrap- 

 ing it out to throw away, as we do a melon. 

 The taste is quite similar to that of a musk- 

 melon, only it is sriioother and richer. Imag- 

 ine a delicious yellow ice-cream, flavored with 

 some tropical fruit, say .something like a ba- 

 nana, and you will get a faint idea of the lus- 

 cious papaya. I ate the fruit again and again, 

 at meals and between meals, and I never could 

 see that it disagreed with me. In fact, when 

 I took the first spoonful it seemed to satisfy a 

 longing for something, I hardly knew what, 

 that I had had almost all my life. Yes, it ac- 

 tually filled a "long-felt want." I do not 

 know that I ought to say it furnished me 

 strength as nourishing food does, such as eggs 

 and milk — probably not. It is something like 

 eating a lot of strawberries or nice peaches. 

 The fruit is delicious ; but with myself, at 

 least, it would hardly be the thing to work on. 

 Since eating the fruit I have attended a stere- 

 opticon lecture given by a missionary from the 

 Micronesian Islands. He was speaking of one 

 of the low flat islands almost on a level with 

 the sea. I asked him : 



" What do the natives do for a livelihood? 

 What sorts of crops do they grow? " 



"Crops! They don't grow crops or any 

 thing else. They do not need to. The mel- 

 on-tree and the cocoanut, with some other 

 tropical plants, furnish them both food and 

 drink whenever they feel inclined to climb 

 the trees and help themselves. Why should 

 they make gardens, or grow things? " 



So you see that, in some parts of the world 

 at least, the people subsist on these fruits with 

 the milk of the cocoanut, and possibly the fish 

 they catch. While visiting Gen. Hastings I 

 expressed some surprise at seeing the papayas 

 growing all over the plantation, here and 

 there and almost everywhere. He laughingly 

 replied that he thought he would have to tell 

 how it came aboiit. They fed the surplus 

 fruit to the pigs, then the manure from the 

 pens was worked into the soil everywhere, and 

 this scattered the seeds so that they always 



had plenty of plants, and more too. In the 

 picture you will notice the artist has named 

 the tree the "pan pau." I suppose this is a 

 common name that has been developed from 

 the word papaya. It is a little unfortunate, 

 for the " paupau " (or pawpaw) in the United 

 States means a wild fruit that is not consider- 

 ed of much consequence. The papaya will 

 bear the second year from the seed. It grows 

 up about as high as your head one season, and 

 bears fruit the next. It will frequently bear 

 very fine fruit when only four or five feet tall. 

 Noticing a picture in one of our agricultural 

 papers, of this fruit, I obtained particulars from 

 Martin Benson, of Dongola, 111., who grows 

 and sells them as a greenhouse-plant. I ex- 

 tract the following from a letter just received 

 from him : 



Mr. A. I. Root i—Th^ papaya is the grande.st bedding 

 plant ever offered, and a delicious fruit. I am very 

 fond of it. It is as easily fruited in the greenhouse as 

 tomatoes; blooms and sets fruit freely outdoors, but has 

 not time to mature. They gro-w like a weed, and en- 

 dure drouth better than any other plant. ] think mon- 

 ey can be made by cultivating this fruit under glass for 

 near-by markets. Mv trees are all grown from a tree 

 which has yielded 192 lbs. of fruit this winter, largest 

 of which weighed 12'-^ lbs. Martin Benson. 



Dongola 111., March 30 



By the way, I am told there are several dif- 

 ferent varieties. The finest I ever ate, I think, 

 was the one I have mentioned, given me by 

 Mr. Baker. I think he obtained the seed 

 somewhere, and considers it extra choice. 

 Well, I took the liberty of wrapping up the 

 seeds from a nice melon, and brought them 

 home ; and if any of the readers of Glean- 

 ings would like to make a trial of the plants 

 for greenhouse I will mail with pleasure half 

 a dozen seeds if they will send me a stamped 

 envelope addressed to themselves. It is quite 

 an ornamental foliage-plant, as friend Benson 

 says, looking not unlike a castor bean when it 

 is small. I think it might be grown in a tub, 

 and set outdoors in the sunmier time, just as 

 we do oleander, century-plants, and others of 

 like habits. 



OUR 

 HOMES, 



BY, A.I. ROOT. 



Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, 

 pressed down, and shaken together, and running 

 over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the 

 same measure that ye meet withal it shall be measured 

 to you again.— Luke 6 :38. 



There are lots of good people in this world 

 of ours. Why, a good many of my "happy 

 surprises " are right along in this line. Yes, 

 and best of all you can usually discover a vein 

 of good in the most disagreeable people if you 

 set about it in the right way. And, still fur- 

 ther, it is in your power to a certain extent to 

 make people bad or make them good. You 

 strike the wrong keys, and there will be dis- 

 cord and stubbornness; and after you once 

 get the discord well started it is not so easy a 

 matter to bring out the harmony. Our text 

 of to-day tells how to do it. It says, " Give;" 

 and then it adds, "and it shall be given unto 



