3o6 The Gardens of the Sun. [ch. xv. 



prevented; and as to their preservation in the form of 

 candied confections or "jam" no one seems to have 

 taken up the matter. Fancy a conserve of snowy mango- 

 steen pulp, preserved mangoes, candied rambutan, or 

 banana marmalade. The late Dr. Lindley once said, in 

 his usual incisive way, that " most tropical fruits were 

 edible," but that "very few were worth eating;" but 

 then the probability is he had never tasted a mango or a 

 mangosteen, a tarippe fruit, or the deliciously rich apricot- 

 like pulp which surrounds the seeds of the caoutchouc- 

 yielding willughbeias, and certainly not a durian. 



The mangoes, oranges, bananas, pomoloes, and pine- 

 apples are all cultivated fruits in the East, just as are our 

 best gooseberries, strawberries, apples, pears, and grapes 

 at home ; but on the other hand we have no wild fruits 

 which can in any way be compared with the durian, 

 jintawan, langsat, trap, tampoe, mangosteen, and ram- 

 butan, aU of which are more truly wild in the Malay 

 islands than are the so-called wUd cherries, gooseberries, 

 currants, and raspberries of om' woods/ It is to the 

 tropics one must go for a drink of fresh cocoanut milk — 

 a taste of the fascinating durian, for a luscious mango, or 

 the delicious mangosteen; and while in the matter of 

 flowers our cultivators at home certainly have the advan- 

 tage, in the case of fruits this much can scarcely be said. 



The regal durian {Durio zibethinus), like the finest of 

 nectarines or melting pears, must be eaten fresh and just 

 at one particular point of ripeness, and then it is, as 

 many think, a fruit fit for a king. So highly is this 

 vegetable- custard valued that as much as a dollar each is 

 not unfirequently paid for fine specimens of the first fruits 

 of the durian crop brought into the Eastern markets. It 

 is a universal favourite both with Malays and Chinese, 

 but the opinions of Europeans vary as to the merits of 



