FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
103 
asked a price for anything, to offer them 
half as much. I saw a big, splendid, 
snarling tiger in a rude cage of poles just 
brought in out of the jungle, and asked 
the man how much he would take for him. 
He said, “Three thousand rupees.” I said, 
“I will give you fifteen hundred.” My 
wife caught hold of my arm and pulled 
me away, saying, “You goose, come away 
from here, quick. Don’t you know he 
will take it? What on earth would you 
do with a tiger?” He was a beauty. 
They don’t kill any animals over there, 
because their religion forbids it. The 
country is simply teeming with animal 
life. They are overrun with snakes and 
vermin. We were told that they some¬ 
times put a screen over their mouths when 
they go to sleep, for fear a fly or other 
insect might get in and they would close 
their mouths and kill it. 
We saw jackals, wolves, snakes, every¬ 
thing you can think of, almost, from the 
car windows of our train. 
So far as the agricultural and horti¬ 
cultural life is concerned in India, they 
are away back. I don’t think they have 
made much progress since the birth of the 
human race. Those people are said to be 
our ancestors. Adam and Eve lived over 
there, probably, and the people have not 
changed much from Adam’s time to this 
in gardening matters. They have, with 
few exceptions, no improved apples, man¬ 
goes, or anything else, as a rule, up to 
date. They work the ground with a 
forked stick, tramp the grain out with 
oxen, women hold it up in sieves and let 
the grain fall and the chaff blow away. 
Yet those fellows bull the markets of the 
world with their grain. They compete 
largely with us. We saw whole train 
loads of wheat produced in this primitive, 
laborious way, going to market. The 
whole country is dotted with the Royal 
Poinciana, which they call the flame-tree, 
growing wild. 
Our next run was westward across the 
Indian ocean into the Red sea. We went 
through this, sailing past Mount Sinai, 
of Holy Writ, up to Suez. Then we 
stopped in Egypt where we made a short 
stay. 
There is not much of interest, horticul- 
turally speaking, after leaving India, un¬ 
til you get to Egypt, and by looking at 
the Journal of this Society for 1906, you 
will find a description of my horticultu¬ 
ral observations in that land as well as 
the Mediterranean countries generally. 
Finally, I wish to say that in all my 
observations, I have not seen a single 
product, either grain, fruit or vegetables, 
that can be put in the same class as to 
excellence with what we raise at home. 
Their cotton is inferior their wheat is 
inferior, their vegetables, aside from a 
few in Japan, are small and lacking in 
toothsomeness. Their fruits are small 
and not charged with the juiciness or 
flavor of our home-grown and European 
fruits. Their melons are unfit to eat. It 
is true, indeed, that in some of the equa¬ 
torial countries there are excellent fruits 
that are not grown in the United States. 
I refer especially to the mangosteen, doe- 
koe, rambotan, etc., but even these, I am 
satisfied, can be raised in improved char¬ 
acter in the Philippines, Hawaii, Porto 
Rico and the Canal Zone. As an illus¬ 
tration of what I mean by this, I will state 
that in India, the home of the mango, 
there is no mango generally grown that 
can compare in size, flavor and general 
