10 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST, [July 1, 1901. 
to my subject— pruning. Let me say that when the 
trees have put out these branches all should be 
taken away when young, save three, which three 
must form the best triangle and left to develop into 
the three main branches. These branches also send 
out secondary ODes ; these secondary branches must 
not be left to grow on just as they came oiit, but 
care must be taken to remove every alternate one, 
leaving, on an average, eighteen inches between 
each. Gormandizers (or suckers as they are some- 
times called), alwo.ys block out air, use up a lot 
of valuable plant-food and give, comparatively, 
nothing in return. The tree should be kept cleai.' 
of these. My difiuition of a gormandizer is a shoot 
springing from the stem of a plant, going straight 
up, and in the case of the cocoa, particularly, giving 
little or no return, thus wasting what would be 
profitably used by the true branches of the plant. 
I do not want to be called a critic, as I opine that, 
to-day, we have more agricultural critics than agri- 
culturists ; still the present system of plucking off 
the pods from the cocoa-tree is abominable. The 
flowers are produced chiefly on the stem of the fruit 
(the peduncle) and when the fruits are torn off, 
apart from the destruction of the bark of the parent- 
plant, the crop is greatly reduced the following 
year, so I would recommend people gathering the 
pods to use a knife and cut off the fruits ; several 
little rings or marks will be seen on the peduncle, 
cut the fruit in the third one from the stem. With 
regular pruning this plant will yield two heavy 
crops annually ; one about June and another in 
December, The time has come when all usaful 
details must be brought out, ''Experience teaches 
wisdom." Let each of us mention our experience, 
not thinking what the nest man will say, and our 
fellow-men may benefit therefrom. — The Journal of 
the Jamaica Agricultural Society. 
THE PAPAW TREE. 
" Forester" writes to the Indian Planters' Gazette : — 
This fruit tree, the Oarica Papaya, Willd, is cultivated 
all over India for its fruit, which is eaten in its ripe 
state as well as cooked and used in curries Vi-hen green. 
They can also be i^iokled and made into preserve. If 
the Linnffian sexual system wanted any additional 
-proofs of its being established on the most solid founda- 
tion, Roxburgh's experiment with this plant would 
have furnished a very strong one. The writer recently 
had occasion to consult his mukhtear on some business 
and noticed some very fine papaya fruit commencing 
to ripen in his compound. Upon remarking that they 
would be much better it thinned, he was informed that 
previous to some more trees being brought from a 
neighbouring compound about halt-a-raile away they 
never grew thickly and what did grow were small and 
of little use in comparison with the fruit he had been 
getting since. Of course the reason was obvious enough. 
He had only one tree to start with and that was a 
female, and the trees he got from a neighbour were a 
mixed lot containing both sexes. When this was 
exnlaiued the man of law was incredulous ; he had 
never heard of such a thing as a sexual system belong- 
ing to the vegetable kingdom, and was very much 
inclined to ibiuk that he was being humbugged. It 
nmst be said for him that he bad some reason for 
doubting the truth of what was being explained to 
him, as he had somewhere or other seen the male tree 
fruiting. A Chittagong friend of the writer's informed 
him that he had male trees which regularly fruited. 
Some specimens of the male tree with fruit on them 
were shown I n Or. Uoxburgh in 1793 by Sir William 
JoneK. Dr. !t'ixl)Ui|.;h had never seen the male tree 
beariiip? i' uii,, ;nifliLwas the only instauce that had 
come to liis l(,i'jwicdee where female or hermaphrodite 
flower:) were foutid on the male papaya tree. It is 
said that the fruiting * of the male tree is common 
enough in some districts. There is nothing impossible 
about it, as, if the male flowers are carefully examined. 
they will all be found to be possessed of female organs, 
although as a rule they are merely rudimentary. The 
papaw tree, although usually looked upon as dioecious, 
perhaps would be more currectly described as being 
diceeio-polygamous or a polygamo-diffioious plant. 
Last season the writer came across what had every 
appearance of being a male tree with a lot of pear- 
shaped fruit hanging upon its pendulous racemes. 
It was growing amongst a lot of other trees close to 
the cook-house. He mentally marked it down for 
observation, but on going to examine it a few days 
later somebody (who, as usual, was nobody) had cut 
it down and taken away the fruit. This v/as in the 
Dibrugarh neighbourhood, but he could not find out 
whether there wsre any more in the district. In 1790 
and 1791 Dr. Roxburgh reared a number of young 
trees in a garden situated a mile and a half from any 
other papaw tree. As soon as he could distinguish the 
male trees he had them all destroyed, The females, 
of which there were nine, grew luxuriantly, being in 
a good .soil and well watered. They blossomed as 
usual aud the fruit grew till it was about half the 
usual size ; then as before they uniformly fell of 
without appearing to have more than the rudiment 
of seeds. If Dr. Roxburgh had made an experiment 
the reverse way, by destroying the female and pre- 
serving the male trees, he possibly might have had 
the male in the absence of the female tree fertilized 
by its own pollen and producing fruit. As often 
happens with other kinds of trees, the pollen of the 
male may be entirely impotent in regard to its 
own pistil only when the more vigorous pistil is 
present on a separate tree. The question is of more 
than botanical interest, as when the so-culled male 
tree fruits, it is Siid th; t the juice is more copious and 
produces more of the digeeiive ferment papam, which 
the unripe fruit of this tree contains. 
The hope v.'hich was once entertained that papain 
would prove a curative agent for cancer has not been 
realised. But, according to a paper read by Dr. 
Hirschfeld at a meeting of the Royal Society held at 
Brisbane, it has been found to be a most valuable 
palliative on account of certain qualities possessed by 
it that had been overlooked, namely, iia analgetic 
audits antiseptic properties. It 'is somewhat strange 
that the natives of India do not seem to be aware of 
the properties of its juice. One variety of the plant at 
least is a native of this country. — the common Carica 
papaya of the bustees, which was introduced into 
England in 1690. Besides this variety we have carica 
cauliflora, a native of Caraceers ; C. citriformis, a 
native of Lima ; C. microcarpa monica ; C. pyriformis, 
Peru ; C. Spinosa, Guiana. 
As the name indicates Microcarpa monica would 
appear to ans\7er the description of the male tree 
wh\ch is said to bear fruit. If this were the case it 
would not be the male tree bearing fruit, as this variety 
is a, hermaphrodite tree, — The Indian Agricultui-ist. 
A NEW BANANA IN THE CONGO 
FREE STATE. 
In the February number of the above journal, Mr. 
E. De Wildeman, Curator of the Botanical Gardens 
at Brussels, gives the following description of a new 
series of banana Vv'hich ;vas discovered by Blr. J. 
Dybowski, Director of the Colonial Girden at Nogent- 
sur-Marne, during his travels in the Congo country, of 
which he had neither seen the flowers nor fruit. 
Subsequently to his last voyage some fruits were 
received, of which the seeds were sown, and produced 
young plants at iMogent, and it is from these that Mr. 
Dybowski has given a summarised descciption of the 
'• fetish banana " (Musa religioia). 
Although we have not been able to study the de- 
Ecription of flowers, we immediately recognised that the 
plant from the French Congo had a great resemblance 
to those we propose to describe here. lilr. Dybowski 
has been good enough to forward, at our request, 
