284 
Story  of  the  Pap  aw. 
Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
June,  1901. 
cultivated  plants  seem  very  susceptible  to  every  sort  of  malady. 
Insects  attack  the  tender  leaves  of  the  young  plants  and  they  wither. 
Fungi  and  bacteria  find  here  a  suitable  soil. 
After  fruiting,  and  especially  if  the  fruits  are  bled,  the  tree  will 
take  on  a  general  debility  and  become  the  prey  of  every  adverse 
circumstance.  One  large  field  was  entirely  eradicated  by  a  disease 
or  diseases  which  the  natives  attributed  to  attacks  of  the  "  mackacka 
worm."10  In  my  opinion,  the  trouble  arose  from  the  inherent  weak- 
ness of  the  cultivated  plant  in  its  altered  environment,  which  ren- 
dered it  susceptible  to  attacks  of  beetles  and  insects  of  various  kinds. 
In  another  series  of  plantings  conducted  with  still  more  careful 
preparation  of  the  ground  and  selection  of  seeds,  coupled  with  care 
for  the  young  plants,  there  was  a  record  of  a  small  proportion  of 
plants  coming  to  maturity,  and  of  these  only  a  meagre  part  bore 
fruit.  None  of  the  plants  or  their  fruits  were  as  large  as  those  of 
the  parent  stock.  All  of  these  efforts  were  accompanied  by  phases 
which  were  puzzling  and  embarrassing. 
The  variations  in  plant  life  which  one  sees  and  hears  of  in  these 
regions  are  somewhat  interesting.  It  is  stated  that  the  shaddock 
contains  thirty-two  seeds,  only  two  of  which  will  produce  shad- 
docks ;  the  remaining  thirty  will  yield  sweet  oranges,  bitter  oranges, 
forbidden  fruit,  good  oranges  and  bad  oranges,  and  until  the  trees 
are  in  full  bearing  no  one  can  guess  what  the  harvest  will  be.  The 
seeds  of  the  mango  selected  from  the  finest  fruit  and  cultivated 
with  care,  will  rarely  produce  anything  approaching  the  parent 
stock.  In  fact,  no  two  trees  of  the  mango  seem  to  resemble  each 
other.  The  papaw  is  likewise  very  prone  to  variation.  Seeds 
selected  with  extreme  care  from  flourishing  trees,  the  fruit  of  which 
would  weigh  fifteen  pounds,  upon  being  planted  would  in  part 
follow  the  parent  stock ;  other  portions  would  revert  to  the  wild 
prototype  and  yield  fruit  the  size  of  a  hen's  egg. 
In  some  of  the  fruits  of  the  papaw  the  seeds  number  five,  in 
others  prodigal  nature  supplies  over  five  hundred,  apparently  only 
a  few  of  these  seeds  are  fertile.    When  a  native  desires  a  single 
10 The  term  "mackacka  worm"  in  the  tropics  is  applied  to  the  larvae  of 
various  beetles  which  feed  upon  plants  that  are  undergoing  decay.  I  suppose 
that  plants  already  diseased  were  the  only  ones  affected,  and  that  the  ravages 
of  these  larvae  hastened  decay.  At  the  present  writing  these  larvae  are  reported 
as  doing  great  injury  to  the  logwood  trees. 
