A description of the mangostan and the bread-fruit ... the first, esteemed one of the most delicious, the other, the most useful of all the fruits of the East Indies : To which are added, directions to voyagers, for bringing over these and other vegetable productions, which would be extremely beneficial to the inhabitants of our West India Islands / By John Ellis.

  • Ellis, John, 1710?-1776.
Date:
1775
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A description of the mangostan and the bread-fruit ... the first, esteemed one of the most delicious, the other, the most useful of all the fruits of the East Indies : To which are added, directions to voyagers, for bringing over these and other vegetable productions, which would be extremely beneficial to the inhabitants of our West India Islands / By John Ellis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    11/72 (page 7)
    The fruit of this tree (it is likewife obferved by Dr. Garcin) is round, of the fize of a fmall orange, from an inch and an half to two inches diameter. The body of this fruit is a cap- fula of one cavity, compofed of a thick rind a little like that of a pomegranate, but fofter, thicker, and fuller of juice. Its tliick- nef$ is commonly of a quarter of an inch. Its outer colour is of a dark brown purple, mixed with a little grey and dark green. The infide of the peel is of a rofe colour, and its juice is purple. Laft of all, this Ikin is of a ftyptick or aftringent tafte, like that of a pomegranate, nor does it flick to the fruit it contains. The infide of this fruit is a furrowed globe, divided into fegments much like thofe of an orange, but unequal in fize; which do not adhere to each other. The number of thefe fegments is always equal to that of the rays of the top which covers the fruit. The fewer there are of thefe fegments, the bigger they are. There are often in the fame fruit, fegments as big again as any of thofe that are on the fide of them. Thefe fegments are white, a little tranfparent, flefhy, membranous, full of juice like cherries or ralberries; of a tafte of ftrawberries and grapes together. Each of the fegments inclofes a feed of the figure and fize of an almond ftripped of its (hell, having a protuberance on one of its fides. * Thefe feeds are covered with two fmall fkins, the outermoft of which ferves for a bails to the filaments and membranes of which the pulp is compofed. The fubftance of thefe feeds comes very near to that of chef- nuts, as to their confiftency, colour, and aftringent quality. This tree, continues the dodlor, which produces the moft de¬ licious fruit of all the Indies, and that yields to none of the beft in Europe, originally grows in the Molucca iftands, where it is called Mangoftan, but has been transplanted from thence to the ifland of Java and Malaca, at which laft place it thrives very well. B 2 Its