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Even in England we are familiar enough with such defences as those possessed by the outer rind of the walnut; but the tropical cashew-nut has a rind so intensely acrid that it blisters the lips and fingers instantaneously, in the same way as cantharides would do.
This is one of the American fruits, which are annually thrown on the coasts of Norway; and are frequently in so recent a state as to vegetate, when properly taken care of, the fruit of the anacardium, cashew-nut; of cucurbita lagenaria, bottlegourd; of the mimosa scandens, cocoons; of the piscidia erythrina, logwood-tree; and cocoa-nuts are enumerated by Dr. Tonning.
There is scarcely a tropical product which this magnificent region does not or may not produce, gutta-percha, india-rubber, sago, tapioca, palm-oil and fibre, yams, sweet potatoes, cloves, nutmegs, coffee, tobacco, pepper, gambier, with splendid fruits in perfection the banana, bread-fruit, anona, cocoa-nut, mangosteen, durion, jak-fruit, cashew-nut, guava, bullock's heart, pomegranate, shaddock, custard-apple, papaya, pine-apple, with countless others.
Then the trees change, the long tresses of an autumn-flowering orchid fall from their branches over the road; dead trees appear transformed into living beauty by multitudes of ferns, among which the dark-green shining fronds of the Asplenium nidus, measuring four feet in length, specially delight the eye; huge tamarinds and mimosa add the grace of their feathery foliage; the banana unfolds its gigantic fronds above its golden fruitage; clumps of the betel or areca palms, with their slender and absolutely straight shafts, make the cocoa-palms look like clumsy giants; the gutta-percha, india rubber, and other varieties of ficus, increase the forest gloom by the brown velvety undersides of their shining dark-green leafage; then comes the cashew-nut tree, with its immense spread of branches, and its fruit an apple with a nut below; and the beautiful bread-fruit, with its green "cantalupe melons," nearly ripe, and the gigantic jak and durion, and fifty others, children of tropic heat and moisture, in all the promise of perpetual spring, and the fulfillment of endless summer, the beauty of blossom and the bounteousness of an unfailing fruitage crowning them through all the year.
The bark of the latter is very rich in tannin, and is used by the natives in the preparation of hides. The fruit is like an apple in appearance, and small, but is highly astringent. The well-known cashew-nut grows like an excrescence from the end of the apple.
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