202 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 



birds, but the frequency of its cultivation causes a 

 dispersion by man's agency. If the mango is only 

 naturalized in the west of British India, this must have 

 occurred at a remote epoch, as the existence of a San- 

 skrit name shows. On the other hand, the peoples of 

 Western Asia must have known it late, since they did 

 not transport the species into Egypt or elsewhere towards 

 the west. 



It is cultivated at the present day in tropical Africa, 

 and even in Mauritius and the Seychelles, where it has 

 become to some extent naturalized in the woods.^ 



In the new v/orld it was first introduced into Brazil, 

 for the seeds were brousrht thence to Barbados in the 

 middle of the last century.^ A French vessel was 

 carrying some young trees from Bourbon to Saint 

 Domingo in 1782, when it was taken by the English, 

 who took them to Jamaica, where they succeeded won- 

 derfully. AVhen the coffee plantations w^ere abandoned, 

 at the time of the emancipation of the slaves, the mango, 

 whose stones the negroes scattered everywhere, formed 

 forests in ever}'- part of the islands, and these are now 

 valued both for their shade and as a form of food.^ It 

 was not cultivated in Cayenne in the time of Aublet, 

 at the end of the eighteenth centur}^, but now there are 

 mangoes of the finest kind in this colony. They are 

 grafted, and it is observed that their stones produce better 

 fruit than that of the orioinal stock.* 



Tahiti Apple — Spondias dulcis, Forster. 



This tree belongs to the family of the Anacardiacece, 

 and is indigenous in the Society, Friendly, and Fiji 

 Islands.^ The natives consumed quantities of the fruit 

 at the time of Cook's voyage. It is like a large plum, of 



* Oliver, Flora of Trop.Afr., i. p. 442 ; Baker, Fl. of Maur. and Seych.^ 

 p. 63. 



^ IInj?he-5, Barhados, p. 177. 



' Macfadyen, Fl. o/ Ja»i., p. 221 ; Sir J. Iloolcer, Speech at the Royal 

 Institute. 



•* Sagofc, Jour, de la Soc. Centr. d*Aijric. de France, 1872. 



* Forster, De Plantis Escidentis Insularum Oceani Australts, p. 33 ; 

 8eoma,nn, Flora VUiensis, p. 51 j Nadaud, Enum. des Plantes de Ta'iti. 

 V- 75. 



