TROPICAL HORTICULTURE. 13^ 



Tropical Hokticulture, with Illustrations of the Prin- 

 cipal Economic Plants of Hot Climates. 



By George Lincoln Goodalb, ProfeBsor of Botany in Harvard University, Cambridge. 



Tropical horticulture is likely to attract more and more atten- 

 tion at the hands of our younger and more enterprising students 

 of the subject of botany as increased facilities are afforded for 

 gaining an acquaintance with the capabilities of the tropics. 

 And with this increase of opportunity there will probably come 

 increased interest on the part of investors and business men in 

 different lines of commerce depending on the products of trop- 

 ical agriculture and horticulture. As some now present are 

 aware, considerable increase of interest in this matter has 

 already been manifested in this vicinity, and already a good 

 amount of capital has gone forward in lucrative undertakings of 

 this nature. 



Therefore it will not be out of place in a meeting in this hall, 

 devoted to the advancement of horticulture in general, to pre- 

 sent some of the phases of this subject and call attention to 

 some of the requisite cautions which possibly may be forgotten. 

 It must be remembered that the subject should be most care- 

 fully examined by all those who intend to engage in tropical pur- 

 suits, and the numerous works of a practical character on the 

 subject leave little excuse for such persons to be ignorant in 

 regard to conditions which will confront them in the tropics. 

 Keferring, then, all inquirers who have in mind undertaking trop- 

 ical horticulture to the treatises of a practical character, many 

 of which can be seen in the excellent library of the Massachu- 

 setts Horticultural Society, I shall pass at once to a brief consid- 

 eration of a few salient points of some general interest, and 

 illustrate the subject by numerous photographs of tropical vege- 

 tation. 



Our cursory survey will be confined to the moist tropics, and 

 will not touch the interesting matter of the deserts, reclaimable 

 and irreclaimable. The tropical climate which we are to look at 

 is best exemplified in the equatorial belt. The climatic condi- 

 tions of this zone have been most graphically described by Belt, 

 Bates, Charles Kingsley, and Alfred Eussell Wallace, whose works 

 are absorbingly interesting from every point of view. 



