Large Pine-Apples Are There Found Of A Delicious Flavour; That Species Of Bromelia Always Grows Solitary Among The Gramina, Like Our Colchicum Autumnale, While The B. Karatas, Another Species Of The Same Genus, Is A Social Plant, Like Our Whortleberries And Heaths.

The pine-apples of Esmeralda are cultivated throughout Guiana.

There are certain spots in America, as in Europe, where different fruits attain their highest perfection. The sapota-plum (achra) should be eaten at the Island of Margareta or at Cumana: the chirimoya (very different from the custard-apple and sweet-sop of the West India Islands) at Loxa in Peru; the grenadilla, or parcha, at Caracas; and the pine-apple at Esmeralda, or in the island of Cuba. The pine-apple forms the ornament of the fields near the Havannah, where it is planted in parallel rows; on the sides of the Duida it embellishes the turf of the savannahs, lifting its yellow fruit, crowned with a tuft of silvery leaves, above the setaria, the paspalum, and a few cyperaceae. This plant, which the Indians of the Orinoco call ana-curua, has been propagated since the sixteenth century in the interior of China,* and some English travellers found it recently, together with other plants indubitably American (maize, cassava, tobacco, and pimento), on the banks of the River Congo, in Africa. (* No doubt remains of the American origin of the Bromelia ananas. See Cayley's Life of Raleigh volume 1 page 61. Gili volume 1 pages 210 and 336.

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