608 Cultivated Plants of the Future. 
varieties. These beans replace meat in the diet of the common 
people. 
Mucuna (3Iucima capitata) and dolichos {Dolichos cultratus) are 
pole beans possessing merit. 
Dioscorea. There are several varieties with palatable roots. 
Years ago one of these was spoken of by the late Dr. Gray as pos- 
sessing “ excellent results, if one could only dig them.” 
Colocasia antiquorum has tuberous roots, which are nutri- 
tious. 
Conophallus Konjak has a large bulbous root which is sliced, 
dried, and beaten to a powder. It is an ingredient in cakes. 
Aralia cordata is cultivated for the shoots, and used as we use 
asparagus. 
(Enanthe stolonifera and Cryptotcenia canadensis are palatable 
salad plants, the former being used also as greens. 
Before passing on to the next class, an improvable group of plants 
— the beverage plants — may here be noticed. 
The principal beverage plants, tea, coffee, and cocoa, are all 
attracting the assiduous attention of cultivators. The first of these 
plants is extending its range at a marvellous rate of rapidity through 
India and Ceylon ; the second is threatened by the pests which have 
almost exterminated it in Ceylon, but a new species, with cro.sses 
therefrom, is promising to resist them successfully ; the third, 
chocolate, is every year passing into lands farther from its original 
home. To these has been added the Kola, of a value as yet not 
wholly determined. 
III. Fruits. 
Botanically speaking, the cereal grains of which we have 
spoken are true fruits — that is to say, are ripened ovaries, but for 
all practical purposes they may be regarded as seeds. The fruits of 
which mention is now to be made are those commonly spoken of in 
our markets as fruits. 
First of all, attention must be called to the extraordinary 
changes in the commercial relations of fruits by two direct 
causes^ 
(1) The canning industry, and 
(2) Swift transportation by steamers and railroads. 
The effects of these two agencies are too well known to require 
more than this passing mention. By them the fruits of the best 
fruit-growing countries are carried to distant lands in quantities 
which surprise all who see the statistics for the first time, for the 
ratio of increase is very startling. 
In the Colonial Exhibition at London, in 1886, fruits from the 
remote colonies were exhibited under conditions which proved 
that, before long, it may be possible to place such delicacies as the 
cherimoyer, the sweet-cup, sweet-sop, rambutan, mango, and man- 
gosteen, at even our most northern seaports. Furthermore, it seems 
to me likely that, with an increase in our knowledge with regard to 
