(e Some wild youth may charm and cheat thee,
Sip thy sweets, and break his vow;
Then the world will scorn and treat thee
As the Fly-Bird did just now.”
British mothers thus impress on
Virgin minds some maxim true;
Zoè heard and used the lesson
Just as British daughters do.
MARCH 9.
The shaddock contains generally thirty-two seeds, two of which only will reproduce shaddocks; and these two it is impossible to distinguish: the rest will yield, some sweet oranges, others bitter ones, others again forbidden fruit, and, in short, all the varieties of the orange; but until the trees actually are in bearing, no one can guess what the fruit is likely to prove; and even then, the seeds which produce shaddocks, although taken from a tree remarkable for the excellence of its fruit, will frequently yield only such as are scarcely eatable. So also the varieties of the mango are infinite: the fruit of no two trees resembling each other; and the seeds of the very finest mango (although sown and cultivated with the utmost care) seldom affording any thing at all like the parent stock. The two first mangoes which I tasted were nothing but turpentine and sugar; the third was very delicious; and yet I was told that it was by no means of a superior quality. The sweet cassava requires no preparation; the bitter cassava, unless the juice is carefully pressed out of it, is a deadly poison; there is a third kind, called the sweet-and-bitter cassava, which is perfectly wholesome till a certain age, when it acquires its deleterious qualities. Many persons have been poisoned by mistaking these various kinds of cassava for each other. As soon as the plantain has done bearing, it is cut down; when four or five suckers spring from each root, which become plants themselves in their turn. Ratoons are suckers of the sugar-cane: they are far preferable to the original plants, where the soil is rich enough to support them; but they are much better adapted to some estates than to others. Thus, on my estate in St. Thomas’s in the East, they can allow of ten ratoons from the same plant, and only dig cane-holes every eleventh year; while, at Cornwall, the strength of the cane is exhausted in the fourth ratoon, or the fifth at furthest. The fresh plants are cane-tops; but those canes which bear flags or feathers at their extremities will not answer the purpose, as dry weather easily burns up the slight arrows to which the flags adhere, and destroys them before they can acquire sufficient vigour to resist the climate.