616 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XL. No. 1035 



old regions. This conservation on the part of 

 those who grow the food plants of the 

 country is due to a universal dislike in the 

 animal kingdom, most strongly developed 

 in the human family, to eating unfamiliar 

 foods. But travel is making all people less 

 and less fastidious as to foods, as the nu- 

 merous new foreign dishes in daily use in 

 our own homes give evidence. Only sav- 

 ages and those who must struggle for suifi- 

 cient food to sustain life live on one or a 

 few foods. 



Let us hastily run over a few foreign 

 plants that may well receive more attention 

 in America, naming fruits first as of most 

 interest to this audience. Japanese plums 

 and persimmons came to America in the 

 medieval days of horticultural progress, 

 and interest in them seems to have ceased. 

 We need new importations of the many 

 types not yet in the country. The fig is an 

 ancient immigrant, but I am told that many 

 desirable relatives were left behind. Date 

 culture is now a most promising infant 

 industry in the southwest. The Chinese 

 jujube promises to be one of the most valu- 

 able of the many plants recently introduced 

 into this country. The jujube is a hardy 

 tree which has been cultivated in China 

 for more than 4,000 years, being one of the 

 five principal fruits of the new republic. 

 There are hundreds of varieties differing 

 in flavor and sizes, some growing less than 

 an inch in length and others equaling the 

 size of a hen 's egg. One variety is seedless. 

 Some kinds are eaten fresh, some are 

 stewed. 



Among the newest of the new on proba- 

 tion, but all clamoring for recognition, are 

 the avocada from tropical America; the 

 f ei joa from Brazil ; a dozen or more annon- 

 aceous fruits from the tropics, of which 

 the cherimoya seems now to be most promi- 

 nent; an edible Osage orange from Cen- 

 tral China ; the roselle, an annual from the 



Old World tropics, valuable for its fruit, 

 stalks and seed. Several species of Ber- 

 heris supply a refreshing fruit in northern 

 Asia and might add variety to the rather 

 spare fruit diet of the colder parts of this 

 continent. Beside these are innumerable 

 new citrus fruits, the number of species 

 and varieties of which seem to be legion — 

 the speaker is neither able to enumerate 

 them nor to tell where they begin or where 

 they leave off. Swingle's splendid work 

 with this genus is one of the most notable 

 contributions to horticulture in recent 

 years. 



The mango has long been grown in Flor- 

 ida, but interest in mangos has recently 

 been renewed through the introduction of 

 choice Indian varieties. Poponoe de- 

 scribes 312 varieties of mangos grown in 

 various parts of the world, of which as yet 

 I judge there are but few in America, 

 though they are not difficult to grow in 

 Florida, California or in our insular pos- 

 sessions. A quotation from Fairchild sug- 

 gests the possible future of the mango in 

 America. He says : 



The mango is one of the really great fruits of 

 the world. . . . There are probably more va- 

 rieties of mangos than there are of peaehes. I 

 have heard of one collection of five hundred dif- 

 ferent sorts in India. There are exquisitely 

 flavored varieties no larger than a plum, and there 

 are delicious sorts, the fruits of which are six 

 pounds in weight. . . . These fine varieties, prac- 

 tically as free from fiber as a freestone peach, 

 can be eaten with a spoon as easily as a oante- 

 loupe. Trainloads of these are shipped from the 

 mango-growing centers of India and distributed 

 in the densely peopled cities of that great semi- 

 tropical empire. 



No one can read Bayard Taylor's fer- 

 vent praise of the durian and the man- 

 gosteen and not desire to grow these fruits 

 in America. This is his panegyric on the 

 durian. 



Of all fruits, at first the most intolerable; but 

 said, by those who have smothered their preju- 



