PINE APPLES. SAPODILLAS. 105 
exported in 1864 was £21,299—which makes them average about 
four cents a piece; that in shipping the pine to the United 
States it is stripped of every thing but its head, while the whole 
plant was formerly sent to England, the leaves and shoots being 
wrapped round the fruit to keep it fresh, but that since 1858 
only the shoots are left on the stalks; that the fruit is arranged 
in tiers, great attention being paid to ventilation; the hatches are 
left open during the voyage ; serious losses often occur on ship- 
board arising from exceptionally bad weather and long voyages, 
as well as from other causes. The shoots are used for new plan- 
tations, and as these are sent with the apples to England the 
price is for that reason increased. There are two annual cut- 
tings: the Cuba is cut early in May and late in June, and the 
sugar loaf from the 1st to the 20th of June, and in July and 
August. As in 1879 and also in 1880 we left the Bahamas in 
April, much to our regret we were unable to test the quality 
of pine apples fully ripened in the field. 
- The sapodilla is very abundant and cheap in Nassau. The 
tree is large and is a good bearer. The fruit is of a uniform dull 
dark brown color, and almost unpromising in its outward ap- 
pearance asa cocoanut. Its skin is very thin,-its flesh yellow, 
soft and sweet, its shape oval, and its diameter from two to three 
inches. <A taste for it has to be acquired, so that while it is dis- 
carded by the many, the few strangers who have learned to love 
it, esteem it very highly. It is conceded to be a very healthy 
fruit. We saw but two varieties. Some specimens of the fruit 
in size, flavor, and richness of the coloring of the flesh, were very 
much superior to those offered ordinarily for sale. 
The cocoanut is cultivated in the Bahamas, and thrives in some 
parts of New Providence. Gov. Rawson includes it in a table 
containing the names of twenty-three varieties of fruit which 
were growing upon the Bahamas in 1864, and which he claimed 
