[September, 



TEOPICAL GARDENING. 



There is but little dignity about gardening 

 and farming in the tropics. It is true, there 

 are great plantations of Sugar and Coffee, 

 but the owners of them are either companies 

 formed abroad, and represented by overseers 

 and officers, or proprietors who are far too 

 aristocratic to touch a hoe-handle or harness 

 a team. The white man does not work in 

 the warm latitudes. The farmer proper of 

 the tropics is in the main little better than 

 the slave whose place he occupies. In the 

 West Indies he is invariably a negro ; on 

 the continent of South or Central America a 

 half-breed, or rather a hybrid, the result of a 

 couple of centuries of Indian, Spaniard, and 

 negro cross-breeding. But wherever he is, 

 he is always wretchedly ignorant and poor. 

 He always farms in a very small way, and 

 by the most primitive methods. An acre of 

 ground constitutes a large farm. He never 

 plows, the hoe and spade being his only I 

 tools. He raises Yams, and kindred indige- 

 nous vegetables, and very good crops of 

 them, too, for he has a fertile soil to aid i 

 him. He never plants on poor ground. If 

 he lives near a running stream, he generally 

 has numerous trees of the Banana and Plant- 

 ain. Though these grow wild in the tropics, j 

 they are improved by cultivation. The wild 

 Bananas root close to the water's edge, and | 

 freshets may carry the plants away. 



We have often seen a rude canoe slip by 

 on some South American stream at early 

 morning, carrying an old squaw, iu a scarlet j 

 cotton gown and a cart-wheel hat, with a 

 roll of tobacco-leaf between her teeth, and 

 two bunches of Bananas for cargo. These j 

 bunches are all she has to sell, and she will j 

 travel twenty miles to dispose of them. The [ 

 old woman is never without a naked boy j 

 and a lean dog for company, and, when the j 

 tide is fair, the party float along, carried by ! 

 the current, and propelled by the wind blow- 

 ing on a big Plantain leaf, which the boy 

 holds upright for a sail. 



Farming to such people is simply a means 

 to an end, and that end is a bare living. 

 They eat what little they raise, and only go 

 to market in order to obtain such neces- 

 sities as the little hardware or ammunition 

 they use or the scanty clothing they wear. 

 If the tropical public had to depend on them 

 for material subsistence, they would starve. 



There are small farmers, or market gar- 

 deners, who supply the markets. Twice a 

 week they appear in town with their prod- 

 ucts, the extent of which would make an 

 American farmer smile. It may be a don- 

 key-load of vegetables, or a basket of fruit 

 carried on the back or head. Its value never 

 exceeds two dollars, and is often less than 

 one. The heaviest loads seen in the tropical 

 market are those of green fodder-grass, 

 freshly cut, and piled up on the back of a 

 patient donkey. On the summit the owner 

 lounges at ease, while his poor brute hob- 

 bles along, directed by blows of a long pole 

 on his ears. Viewed from the rear, the 

 aspect of the combination of man, beast, 

 and grass is very curious indeed. Green 

 fodder is in constant demand, as every one 

 with any pretensions to gentility keeps horses 

 or saddle-mules. 



Another curiosity of tropical farming is 

 the Yam. There are two species : the finer, 

 which is a very fair substitute for Potatoes 

 when it is mashed, is small and succulent ; 

 the coarser is large, stringy, and tasteless. 

 The stranger who sees these latter stacked 

 up in a market-place, invariably takes them 

 for fire-wood, and they are often dry and 

 fibrous enough to serve for burning. 



Such products as the small farmers of the 

 tropics raise are all easily cultivated. Crops 

 which require care, such as Cocoa and Coffee, 

 are left to the more enterprising and enlight- 

 ened foreigner, with a sprinkling of the 

 higher-class natives. Even Sugar-cane is 

 sparsely grown by the small farmer. The 

 little he does raise is for sweetening his 

 water and coffee. He simply crushes the 

 cane by a primitive method from time to 

 time, as he requires it. The unelarified 

 juice, which he calls guarapo, is his only 

 substitute for sugar. 



Corn is raised to feed the horses and mules 

 and to bake into cakes. The grass-fodder is 

 too light for a constant diet, and draught or 

 pack animals have to have some Corn daily 

 when at work. For baking, the Corn is sim- 

 ply pounded in a hollow stone, mixed with 

 water and salt, and cooked on a hot stone or 

 iron plate, and usually rubbed with raw red 

 pepper to flavor it. 



No more picturesque or wretched picture 

 can be conceived than one of the little farms 

 of South or Central America. A hut of Palm 

 boards, with a rotten roof of Palm branches, 

 swarming with bats, scorpions, and other 

 vermin, constitutes the farmer's home. The 

 floor is of earth, the beds are frameworks of 

 boards on which the inmates stretch without 

 the effete formality of undressing. Ham- 

 mocks are not as often seen as one would 

 fancy. All travelers, however, carry them, 

 and for a dime obtain the privilege of sling- 

 ing them from the beams. Many farm-houses 

 are mere sheds, with the sides open to the 

 winds. 



The farms themselves present none of the 

 pleasing aspectsof cultivated ground. The dif- 

 ferent crops are grown in patches, it is true, 

 but rank, unweeded, and without care. Nat- 

 ure provides a soil so rich that man needs 

 to give it but little labor ; when, after years, 

 the ground is worked out, the farmer opens 

 another patch, for all is free. 



Such a land as this would be a paradise 

 for the intelligent and energetic northern 

 farmer, but for the fact that in this ener- 

 vating and malarial climate hard labor is 

 deadly. The white man who settles here, 

 and works as he is accustomed to labor in 

 the cooler climate at home, soon dies, and 

 only he who adapts himself to the listless cli- 

 mate survives. — Alfred Trumbull, in Amer- 

 ican Agriculturist. 



THE PAPAW. 



The Papaw of the tropics is Carica Papaya, 

 commonly called Mamao in Brazil. 



The tree attains considerable size, but is 

 very soft and short-lived. The foliage has 

 the general effect of a Palm, and the tree 

 has been described as such by some writers. 

 It is a very rapid grower, attaining a height 

 of fifteen feet in a few months from seed. 

 When a forest or newly cleared land has 

 been burned over in the Amazon valley this 

 tree springs up as Raspberries do in similar 



cases in the woods of the northern United 

 States. How the seed, which is the size of 

 a very small Pea, gets to out-of-the-way lo- 

 calities, or preserves its vitality, is a mystery 

 The flowers are light yellow ; the males and 

 females being on different trees. The fruit 

 is orange-color, roundish or oblong, and the 

 size of a small Melon. It is borne clustered all 

 around the trunk of the tree, just below the 

 great crown of leaves. The pulp is orange- 

 yellow, soft, full of small, black seeds, and 

 very sweet; indeed, it is so rich that 

 one can eat but little of it. The juice of 

 this tree has the peculiar property of ren- 

 dering tough meat tender, and for this pur- 

 pose the leaves or the green fruit are often 

 boiled with the meat, or the leaves are 

 rubbed over meat which is to be roasted, 

 The green fruit boiled tastes like Turnips, 

 and the ripe fruit is made into a very rich 

 preserve with sugar. The rapid growth of this 

 tree from seed suggests that it might be made 

 available as a "subtropical" for summer 

 planting in the gardens in the United States. 

 Its foliage surpasses in effect anything now 

 used for that purpose, and as a supply of 

 seeds could readily be obtained, the experi- 

 ment is worth trying. 



E. S. Band, Jr. 



HOT WATER FOR FORCING VEGETABLES. 



Hot-houses are being widely introduced 

 into Italy, says Lcs Mond.es. In these, gen- 

 erally the air is heated, which again warms 

 the earth. A Turin inventor M. Cirio has 

 reversed the procedure and has run hot 

 water through the earth which he wishes to 

 warm. 



The hot baths of Acqui are supplied by a 

 hot spring. After the various purposes of 

 the establishment have been served by it, 

 this water still retains a serviceable amount 

 of heat. Mr. Cirio has made at the side of 

 the baths a garden inclosing five hundred 

 square meters, and by means of earthen- 

 ware pipes has made the water leaving the 

 baths to circulate under the ground in all 

 directions. He has planted 10,000 Aspar- 

 agus, 4,000 Chicory, and many Lettuce and 

 Strawberry plants. 



The Japanese have adopted similar meth- 

 ods ; the waters of hot springs about Tokio 

 are about to be experimented with in a sim- 

 ilar way, and the volcanic heat of certain 

 j districts in Japan is also to be utilized, by 

 | conducting the heated air from subterranean 

 I wells and bringing it to the surface. 



TOBACCO JUICE VAPOR FOR PLANTS. 



The Scientific American states that tobacco 

 juice has been tested in France as an insect- 

 icide in greenhouses with great success. In- 

 stead of burning or smoking the tobacco, 

 which is a very offensive process to some 

 persons, the tobacco is made into an extract 

 by soaking or boiling, and the juice is then 

 placed over a chafing dish, a fire, or the flame 

 of an ordinary lamp, and deposited in the 

 greenhouse or conservatory. Delicate plants 

 which are very sensitive to smoke are not 

 injured by this vapor, and it leaves no of- 

 fensive atmosphere ; while it effectually dis- 

 poses of thrips, lice, scale insects, and slugs. 

 One quart of tobacco juice, vaporized in a 

 house containing 350 feet, is an ample 

 amount to clear it of insects. 



