Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 August 1875 — Fruit in Ceylon. [ARTICLE]

Fruit in Ceylon.

A Ceylon correspondent of the Boston Transcript writes: “All vegetable life seems to flourish here most luxuriantly. - The cocoa palm we see everywhere along the coast, and it, with the bread-fruit tree, the yak tree, the banyan and, now’ and then, a teak or a cottonwood tree, make up a great part of the woody growth. I forgot to add the areca palm, from which the betel-nut is obtained. This is a little smaller than the cocoa palm, but nearly as high and always perfectly straight. The nuts grow in large bunches and are about the size of a lemon before the outside skin is taken off. The bread fruit is about the size of two fists. It has a green, rough skin and, when cooked, tastes like a sweet potato, but not so sweet. The mango is about the size of an orange, has a green, thick skin, and a large stone in the center. The flowers are very beautiful and in great variety. The cocoanut tree seems to be even more useful to these people than the bamboo is to the Japanese. The nut is used for food and drink, the shells for dishes. The outside envelope is put into water and rotted; then aried, pounded and the strong fiber woven into ropes and matting. The meat is pressed for the oil. The leaves of the tree are used for roofs, fences and to make rough baskets. The sap affords ‘ toddy’ and sugar. The wood also serves good purposes. The palm-leaf is used to protect the cocoanuts from thjeves. It is held vertically against the trunk and the ends of the leaflets are tied together on the ‘other side of the trunk. This is done before the nuts are ripe. It afterward becomes dry, and if anyone attempts to climb the tree he cannot avoid rattling the crisp leaf, wlpch warns the owner. The banana is twelve or fifteen feet high. It bears one bunch and is then replaced by a new shoot. Sometimes a stone is seen hanging from the end of a bunch of bananas, which is said to dray the sap into them and make them develop more fully. The pineapples are not so good as those we had at Singapore, as they grow wild.’’ .

—Huber, the younger, one day took an ant’s nest to populate one of those glass contrivances which he used for making his observations, and which consisted of a sort of glass bell placed over the nest. He set at liberty one part of the ants, which fixed themselves at the foot of a neighboring chestnut tree. Tie rest were kept, during four months, in the apparatus, and at the end ot this time Huber moved the whole into the garden, and a few ants managed to escape. Having met their old companions, who still lived at the foot of the chestnut-tree, they recognized them. They were seen, in fact, all of them, to gesticulate, to caress each other mutually with their antennae, to take each other by the mandibles, as if to embrace in token of joy, and then they re-entered together the nest at the foot of the chestnut-tree. Very soon they came in a crowd to look for the other ants under the bell, and in a few hours our observer’s apparatus was completely evacuated by its prisoners. —Laura D. Fair, before the Probate Court, in Ban Francisco, the other day,, got an order authorizing the sale of some real estate standing in the name of her little daughter. As she asked for the favor she carelessly reached around toward her hippocket for her handkerchief, or something, and the Judge out with the order forthwith. Everybody seems to hold that woman in respect out there. A pretty piece of business— drawing salaries. V. / \