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REPORT OF THE FIRST SEMI-ANNUAL MEETING 



query I believe we can truly say that its food value has been fully 

 recognized by those peoples who are intimately familiar with it, 

 such as the Cubans, the Mexicans, the natives of tropical America 

 generally and those northerners who have lived or traveled in the 

 tropics. But it was never realized here because until very recently 

 we did not know we could grow the avocado — indeed we scarcely 

 knew there was such a fruit. 



One can scarcely appreciate the importance of this fruit to the 

 peoples of tropical America until he visits some such region as 

 Cuba, and sees the enormous quantities of avocados piled in the 

 markets, and finds how universally the people are using them as 

 a substantial addition to almost every meal. It was only last sum- 

 mer that I had this matter brought home to me, while traveling- 

 through the island of Cuba in company wnth a young Cuban from 

 the Experiment Station at Santiago de las Vegas. We ate avocados 

 and we ate them every day. Being accustomed to take mine with 

 a little seasoning, I called for salt and lemon juice. He scorned 

 the idea of adding anything to the avocado, and after cutting the 

 fruit in slices, mixed it with whatever dish he happened to be eat- 

 ing at the time. He was especially partial to a mixture of fried 

 eggs and avocado. Certainly, from the point of view of food value, 

 this was a rich combination. The Cubans sometimes take a little 

 salt with their avocado, and they are by no means averse to a 

 guacamole — avocado salad — but I do not think any true Cuban 

 believes, right down in the bottom of his heart, that you can 

 improve the avocado very much by adding anything to it. 



Why has not the avocado been more extensively planted in 

 tropical America on a commercial scale? There are, I believe, two 

 principal reasons for this. In the first place there are very few 

 fruits that have ever been cultivated in the tropics on a commer- 

 cial scale, as we understand that term, and secondly, there is the 

 difficulty of propagating the avocado asexually and thus obtaining 

 in quantity trees of known, desirable varieties which would fulfill 

 in a reasonable degree the demands of the market. W^e cannot, 

 of course, assume that had some easy means of vegetative propa- 

 gation been known to the Mexicans, they would have been flooding 

 our markets years ago with splendid avocados ; this wotild prob- 

 ably not have been the case, but if the avocado had been propa- 

 gated like the banana and the pineapple I believe its culture would 



