OCTOBEE 30, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



617 



dices, to be of all fruits, at last, the most indispen- 

 sable. When it is brought to you at first, you 

 clamor till it is removed; if there are durians in 

 the next room to you, you can not sleep. Chloride 

 of lime and disinfectants seem to be its necessary 

 remedy. To eat it seems to be a sacrifice of self- 

 respect; but, endure it for a while, with closed 

 nostrils, taste it once or twice, and you will cry for 

 durians thenceforth, even — I blush to write it — 

 even before the glorious mangosteen. 



Listen to his laudation of the "glorious 

 mangosteen. ' ' 



Beautiful to sight, smell and taste, it hangs 

 among its glossy leaves the prince of fruits. Cut 

 through the shaded green and purple of the rind, 

 and lift the upper half as if it were the cover of 

 a dish, and the pulp of half-transparent, creamy 

 whiteness stands in segments like an orange, but 

 rimmed with darkest crimson where the rind was 

 cut. It looks too beautiful to eat; but how the 

 rarest, sweetest essence of the tropics seems to 

 dwell in it as it melts to your delightful taste. 



One need not titillate the palate to enjoy 

 such fruit. Can they be so delectable? 

 Surely we can find a place for them some- 

 where in America. 



Let us turn to a few examples of prom- 

 ising vegetable and farm crops of foreign 

 countries not yet cultivated in the United 

 States. Only those which give most em- 

 phasis to the present paper can be men- 

 tioned. 



All know that rice furnishes the chief 

 food of China, but few are aware that 

 sorghum is as important a crop in Asia 

 as rice and that it is the chief food of a 

 large part of Africa. In China not only 

 are the stalks of sorghum used, but bread 

 is made from the seeds. In parts of India, 

 sorghum is the staff of life. The Zulu 

 Kaffirs live on the stalks, which are chewed 

 and sucked, and Livingstone says ' ' the peo- 

 ple grow fat thereon. ' ' The several species 

 of yams constitute one of the cheapest and 

 most widely distributed food plants in the 

 world, yet the yam is little grown in Amer- 

 ica. Several genera of Aroidea, as 



Caladium, Alocasia, Colocasia and Arum, 

 each with innumerable varieties, furnish 

 taro, arrowroot, ape and other more or less 

 familiar food to the South Sea islanders. 

 In a bulletin from the United States De- 

 partment of Agriculture, under the title, 

 "Promising Root Crops for the South," 

 these Aroids, called under their native 

 names of yautias, taros and dasheens, are 

 recommended as most valuable wet-land 

 root crops for the South Atlantic and Gulf 

 States. Of the place of the eocoanut in the 

 world's economy I need not speak. Vari- 

 eties of Maranta were grown in Mississippi 

 and Georgia in 1849, but disappeared. 

 From one of the several species of this 

 genus comes the arrowroot of commerce. 

 Arrowroot is a favorite food of the Feejees 

 and their neighbors, as well as of the in-^ 

 habitants of Cape Colony, Natal and Queens- 

 land. May not arrowroot some time be 

 produced profitably in America? The 

 banana has been on our tables less than a 

 generation, yet it is now one of the com- 

 monest foods. There are several species 

 and many varieties yet to be introduced 

 into the tropics of America. The leaves 

 and buds of several agaves furnish an 

 abundant and a very palatable food to our 

 southern neighbors. From plants of the 

 large genus ManiJiot of equatorial regions, 

 tapioca is made under conditions which 

 could be greatly improved. As cassava, 

 one of these manihots is already important 

 in the United States and may some time 

 compete with corn and wheat in the food 

 supply of the country. 



To quench the thirst of the teeming 

 millions in time to come there may be a 

 multiplicity of beverages as well as of 

 foods to mitigate hunger. In Arabia sev- 

 eral millions of people drink khat, while in 

 southern South America as many more 

 millions allay their thirst with mate. Mate, 

 according to Fairchild, can be produced 



