THE MANGOSTEEN AND ITS RELATIVES 401 



and on this account it is likely to be a good shipper. Fruits 

 which were sent in cold storage to Washington from Trinidad 

 were excellent when eaten twenty-one days later, even though 

 they had been out of cold storage over a week." Shipments 

 are regularly made from the Straits Settlements to the markets 

 of Calcutta. When the fruits decay, the rind hardens instead 

 of becoming soft. 



Little is known regarding the enemies of the mangosteen. 

 W T . N. C. Belgrave l reports a fungous parasite, Zignoella 

 gardnece, which causes the formation of cankers on the stems, 

 working back from the young to the older branches. When 

 the latter have been attacked, the foliage withers and eventually 

 the entire tree dies. As a combative measure it is recommended 

 to cut and burn trees which are attacked, in order to check the 

 spread of the disease. 



There are as yet no named varieties of the mangosteen in 

 cultivation. 



THE MAMEY 

 (Mammea americana, L.) 



Christopher Columbus, after his first visit to Veragua in 1502, 

 is said to have described the mamey as a fruit the size of a 

 large lemon, with the flavor of the peach. Gonzalo Hernandez 

 de Oviedo, about twenty years later, described it more fully and 

 reported it as most excellent. 



As a horticultural product, the mamey remains in very 

 much the same position which it occupied at the time of the 

 Discovery. It is a dooryard tree, nowhere cultivated on a 

 commercial scale, but considered by the Indians a delicious fruit. 

 Europeans who have settled in tropical America have learned 

 that it yields a preserve which tastes remarkably like that made 

 from the apricot. 



1 Agr. Bull, of the Federated Malay States, 3, 1915. 



2D 



