224 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAI. SOCIETY. 



There were exported from Governor's Harbor and Tarpuni 

 Ba}', two adjacent districts, in 1890, 295,3-i5 dozens of pineapples 

 for which Avas received £23,000, or 811o,000. In addition to 

 these there were consumed in a canning factory 22,000 dozen, 

 which were returned at a value of $2,500, but which were prob- 

 ably more nearly worth, and doubtless realized, more than S6,000 

 for the pineapples, aside from the expense of packing. These 

 were all exported to Baltimore and New York. 



The red or Cuban variety is the one mostly cultivated, it being 

 much preferred for quality and size. The plants are propagated 

 by offsets or suckers, taken from the older plants after the fruit is 

 cut. They are set out in August and sometimes bear the next 

 j-ear, but a full crop is not obtained until eighteen months after 

 planting. The cutting season begins in May and from that time 

 until the harvest is ended is the active season of the j^ear with the 

 gathering, packing and shipping of the fruit. The fields are not 

 immediately contiguous to the settlement but are planted up and 

 down the island, where the soil is propitious. Mau}^ of them are 

 several miles away and the field hands go to and from their work 

 in small cat-boats, thirtj^-five of which were counted in Governor's 

 Harbor one morning. They go out with the dawn and return at 

 sundown. The plants grow so thickly that, after the first year, 

 but little cultivation is required and their serrated leaves form a 

 prickl}' thicket that it was found impossible to penetrate, without 

 injur}' to person or clothing, and yet the negro field-hands, with a 

 better understanding of liow to do it, would easily pass through it 

 Ijarefooted, without harm or ditficultj". 



The crop will vary greatly being from eight hundred to fifteen 

 hundred dozen per acre. It has been doubled in recent years by 

 the use of commercial fertilizers especially prepared for this crop, 

 ot which a thousand barrels were used in 1890 in the district of 

 Governor's Harbor, costing about seven dollars and a half per 

 barrel. Formerly it was the practice to plant a field and crop it 

 for three or four years and then, as the soil became exhausted, let 

 it come up to scrub and after laj'ing fallow, as it were, for ten or 

 twelve years clear it up and go through the routine again. Now," 

 however, under the present use of fertilizers, the soil does not 

 become impoverished and the plantations can be renewed for a 

 much longer time, and so far none have been allowed to return to 

 the wild state. 



