Part 14 (2/2)

In North Queensland the plant grows everywhere In the dry, buoyant clie, and in the steamy coastal tract, on cliff-like hill-sides, on sandy beaches a few feet above high-waterrocks with but a few inches of soil, and where the decayed vegetation of generations has made fat mould many feet deep, the papaw flourishes It asks foothold, heat, light and iven these conditions a plant within a few in to provide food--entertaining, refreshi+ng, salubrious--and will continue so to do for years Its precociousness is so great and its productiveness so lavish, that by the time other trees flaunt their first blosso of senile decay, leaving, however, numerous posterity The fruit is delicate, too, and soon resolves itself into its original elements Pears and peaches are said by the artistic to enjoy but a brief half hour of absolute perfection The artist alone knows the interval between immaturity and deterioration The refined and delicate perception of the exquisite and transient aro the fine arts Some people are endoith nice discriher the poetic instinct, generally the better qualified the individual to detect and enjoy the fugitive excellences which fruits possess Can a gourh he ross and startling--can he in the quantity of inconvenient food he consumes, be expected to pose as a critic of the most etherealised branch of epicureanism? The true eater of fruit is of a school apart, not to be classed with the individual who, because of the rites and observances of the table, accepts, in no exalted spirit, a portion of fruit at the nether end of a feast He is one who has attained, or to whonant sense of all that does the least violence to the sense of taste and s edification in things as diverse as the loud jack fruit and the subtleto its special characteristics, just as a lover of rand harorian Chant and in the tender cadences of a song of Sullivan's Are those who have sensitive and correct palates for fruit not to be credited with art and exactitude, as well as critics ofand statuary, and connoisseurs of wine?

As with row it themselves, who learn of the relative merits of the produce of different trees, and who can time their acceptance of it fro eleood and great papaw really is The fruit of some particular tree is of course not to be tolerated save as a vegetable, and then what a desirable vegetable it is? It has a precise and particular flavour, and texture reeable And as a hly-flavoured; many that provoke louder and more sincere acclarateful, is ive credence to all that scientific research has made known of it, we shall have to concede that the papaw possesses social influences more potent than e

But there may be sos to the passion-fruit family (PassIFLORA) a technical title bestowed on account of a fancied resemblance in the parts of the flower to the instrus and death And it is said to have received its generic na that of the coested that it was originally introduced from the district of Papaya, in Peru, and that ”papaw” is merely a corruption of that name The tree is, as a rule, unbranched, and soreat leaves, often a foot and a half long, borne on smooth, cylindrical stalks, are curiously cut into seven lobes, and the stem is hollow and transversely partitioned with thin membranes

One of the most reamous--that is to say, there may be male and female and even hermaphrodite flowers on the same plant Commonly the plants are classed as ely predoht by the selection of seeds and by artificial fertilisation to control the sex of the plant so that the fruit-bearing females shall be the more nuenerally obtains a orous initial start in life, and in very infancy presents a more robust appearance, heroically weed out weak and spindly seedlings with occasionally happy results The mild Hindoo, however, who has cultivated the papaw (or papai to adopt the Anglo-Indian title) for centuries, and likeishes to avoid the cultivation of unprofitable male plants, seeks by ceremonies to counteract the bias of the plant in favour of e of man or boy, a maiden, pure and undefiled, takes a ripe fruit from a tree at a certain phase of the moon, and plants the seed in accordance with more or less elaborate ritual The belief prevails that these observances procure an overwhel majority of the female element The problem of sex, which bewilders the faithless European, is solved satisfactorily to the Hindoo by a virgin prayerful and pure

On plants which have hitherto displayed only masculine characteristics, s, loosely-branched axillary panicles, ans which result in fructification, and such fruit is ostentatiously displayed Theclosely and coerously from the end of the panicles--an example of witless paternal pride This fruit of e dienerally woodeny of texture and bitter as to flavour, but fully developed as to seeds

The true fruit is round, or oval, or elongated, sometimes pear-shaped, and with flattened sides, due to mutual lateral pressure As le tree at one and the sahed 8 lb 11 oz They hug the stees, the lower tier ripe, the next upper consistently to the rudiments of flower-buds in the crown of the tree The leaves fall as the fruit grows, but there is always a crown or umbrella to ward off the rays of the sun When ripe, the most approved variety is yellow In the case of the fe out of the way of a male, the fruit is smaller in size, and seedless or nearly so

Another curious, if not unique point about this estimable plant is that sometimes within the cavity of a perfect specimen will be found one or two infant naked fruits, likewise apparently perfect Occasionally these abnormal productions are crude, unfashi+oned and deforht, with abundance of water, and in high temperature, the fruit ers rude,” lest the abbreviated stalk pulls out a jagged plug, leaving a hole for the untimely air to enter The stalkfruit borne reverently and immediately to the table The rite is to be perfor, for the papaw is essentially a breakfast fruit, and then when the knife slides into the buff-coloured flesh of a cheesy consistency, lobules exude fro beads are emblems of perfection Plentiful dark seeds adhere to the anterior surface Some take their papaith the ar and a drop or two of lime or lemon juice; some with a few of the seeds, which have the flavour of nasturtium The wise eat it with silent praise In certain obvious respects it has no equal

It is so clean; it conveys a delicate perception of ularly persuasive It does not cloy the palate, but rather seductively sti, for to the stomach it is pleasant, wholesome, and helpful When you have eaten of a papaw in its priroithout check or hindrance, and has been removed from the tree without bruise or bleood and chaste food, and you should be thankful and of a gladsome mind Moreover, no untoward effects arise from excess of appetite If you be of the fair sex your eyes hten on such diet, and your complexion become more radiant If a mere man you will be the manlier

So much on account of the fruit Soar as a condiment, when they resemble capers The pale yellow male flowers, iive zest to the soiled appetite, the corateful The seeds used as a thirst-quencher form component parts of a drink welcome to fever patients The papaw and the banana in conjunction form an absolutely perfect diet What the one lacks in nutritive or assimilative qualities the other supplies No other food, it is asserted is essential to our Our fictitious appetites s, and all iven the papaw and the banana, the rest are superfluous Where the banana grows the papaw flourishes Each is singular fro before arrival at reat renown The peculiar properties of the milky juice which exudes froo The active principle of the juice known as papain, said to be capable of digesting two hundred tiht of fibrine, is used for worm and ichthyosis or fish-skin disease

By cohan old hen a the broad leaves to restore to it the youth and freshness of a chicken In some parts of South Ae ”apparent leather to tender and juicy steak” Other folks envelop the meat in the leaves and obtain a similar effect Science, to ascertain the verity or otherwise of the popular belief applied certain tests, the results of which deations were founded on truth and fact A commonplace experiment was tried A s twenty-four hours, after a short boiling became perfectly tender; a similar piece wrapped in paper submitted to exactly similar conditions and processes remained hard Few facts are more firmly established than that the milky juice softens--in other words hastens the decomposition of--flesh Further, the fruit in soetable with redient in a popular sauce, and is preserved in a variety of ways as a sweetmeat Syrups and wines and cordials made from the ripe fruit are expectorant, sedative and tonic

Ropes arestains the papaw has acquired the name of the melon bleach; the leaves, and a portion of the fruit are steeped in water, and the treated water is used in washi+ng coloured clothing, especially black, the colours being cleaned and held fast

In the country in which it is supposed to be enderaze under the papaw tree they becoes that the roots and extracted juice possess aphrodisiac properties, and who a us would not rather place credence upon this particular fairy tale of science than the fairy tales of swarthy and illiterate and possibly biassed gentle attributes, an adht be quoted as a final note of praise--

”The strange and beautiful races of the Antilles astonish the eyes of the traveller who sees them for the first time It has been said that they have taken their black, brown, and olive and yellow skin tints froht-hued rinds of the fruit which surround them If they are to be believed, the mystery of their clean, clear complexion and exquisite pulp-like flesh arises from the use of the papaw fruit as a cosmetic A slice of ripe fruit is rubbed over the skin, and is said to dissolve spare flesh and remove every ble and old, producing the most beautiful specimens of the human race”

THE CONQUERING TREE

Inconsequent as Nature appears to be at tiiven to whims, fancies and contradictions, only those who study with attention her moods may estimate how truthful and how sober she really is She is honest in all her purposes, and though changeful and gay in apparel never cheap nor h the leafyairily a profuse mass of fiery red seeds, distinctive in shape, may be the prototype of a flirt, but the flirtation which arrests attention and bewitches the beholder is also innoxious There is nothing of the artificial about the display The colours flaunted are true, perfect and pure, however cunningly, however boldly by their ed The true lover knows too that in her least conspicuous moods, Nature is as consistent and as wonderful as when in her exuberance she carpets a continent with flowers, and when all the forests of a country, at her bidding, don a erate any of her ly forbiddingface The smiles may not be apparent to all, but they are there for those who expect and look for therove swamp be taken as an illustration of an untoward aspect of Nature, and see whether a the apparent confusion, and the mud and sliood humour, kindly disposition, real prettiness, and orderly and systematic purpose

On the deltas and banks of all the rivers and creeks of North Queensland and on rove flourishes, that ambitious tree which performs an important function in the scheme of Nature Its botanical title reveals its special character--Rhizaphora

Very diverse indeed are the means by which plants are distributed While sorove is maritime

While still pendant from the pear-shaped fruit of the parent tree, the seed, a spindle-shaped radicle, varying in length froerminates--ready to form a plant immediately upon arrival at a suitable locality A sharp spike at the apex represents the e froht is so nicely adjusted that the spindle floats perpendicularly or nearly so, when owning a separate existence froins its reested that the viviparity of the rove is a survival of a very rerove swae when the earth was enveloped in clouds and radual decrease in tepid aqueous vapour the viviparous habit, then almost universal, was lost, except in the case of this plant Other plants, however, exhibit the characteristic Notably one of the handsomest of the local ferns (ASPLENIUM BULBIFERUM) which, withuntil they are not only fully developed but are strong and lusty As the fronds die they incline earthwards, each weary with the burden of a new and virile generation--son parts, some create a colony round the parent This fern derove--water, heat and huives unique interest to a rove radicles fall into the rivers during February and March Out at sea miles from the land you may cross the sinuous ranks of the marine invaders--a disorderly, planless venture at the mercy of the wind and waves Myriads perish, hopeless, waterlogged derelicts, never finding foothold nor resting-place But thousands of these scouts of vegetation live to fulfil the glorious purpose of winning new lands, of increasing the area of continents This arrogant plant not only says to the ocean, ”Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further; and here shall thy proud waves be stayed” but unostentatiously wrests fro territory