Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-12-12
Agricultural Department
Working With a New Fruit.
rs A TROPICAL LUXURY
SOME VARIETIES HARD TO EAT
OTHERS NOT.
Promises to Be Valuable Crop, but
Its Area of Cultivation Is Re-
stricted.

The Department of Agriculture wants to
teach the American public to appreciate
mangos. and thereby add another trop-
| ical or subtrop.cal fruit to the American
| market This is not wholly a new idea
The department has been working at man
! go culture for about fourteen years and
| has one of the most complete collections
| of mango plants in the world. But ii is
| only In the past year that the industry has
! really begun to look up. and it seems as
| though there were a chance of making it
| a real commercial success.
| The mango is almost entirely tropical
| fruit, so that there is little of the United
States proper that is adapted to its culture
But Florida, below the latitude of Palm
Beach, Porto Rico and Hawaii and the
| Philippines are all good spots and 1t is
| expected that within a few years the mango
| industry will be worth reckoning with.
Since the war with Spain many people
| have eaten mangos. Prior to that 1t is
| doubtful whether many people in the
United States had ever tasted them. Pos
| sbly it is because of this more or less wide
| ly disseminated knowledge that the mango
| industry has not thriven as it should. Yet
| that il is more or less of libel on the
mango. The fruit grows wild in Cuba. In
| fact ii it had not teen for the mango
| Spain might have st:ll been n possession
| of the island. for insurgents Were able to
! live on mangos when there was nothing
| else for them to live on. Probably every
one of the 2T.C00 American soldiers who
| poured into Cuba ate mangos. Some of
them never repeated the experiment. Yet
| there is a certain seductive flavor to the
| fruit that makes even civilized people eat
1t. There is a spicy, aromatic flavor to 1t
that is found In no other fruit and which
will make an otherwise respectable and
weil-conducted person eat it second or
a third time, even with the certainty that
he will have to turn the hose on himself
afterward
Native Indian Fruit.
But this is true only of the common or
garden mango. The Department Of Agri-
culture has collected mangos from all over
the world, and Mr.. Oliver, who is in charge
of the tropical fruit work and is himself a
mango enthusiast, says that there are
| many varieties two especially that can be
eaten in polite society. They are the Null
goba and the Alphonos, and they are the
chief sorts that the department Is trying
to implant in the southern regions of this
| country.
| The best OF the mangos come from India,
where they have been cultivated for hun
| dreds of years, and the Agricultural De-
! partment has got specimens of all the best
varieties. The common West Indian man.
COS is more or less like short length of
hemp rope soaked in turpentine and brown
sugar. But the department has mangos
that have scarcely any of this woody fiber
| in them. that will skin like plum and that
have all and more than the peculiar Sc
ductive flavor of the West Indian fruit. Al
together. there are sixty-two varieties in
| the collection and these have come from
| all quarters of the tropical world from
| India. Africa. Ceylon and the Malay archi-
pelago. When they have been brought to
the department they are grated onto the
| stock of hardy seedlings. and from these
cuttings can be taken in great quantities
! and 'enarched" upon hardy Seeding stock.
There is one tree in the department green
house that has furnished almost 100 cut
tings. and the average potted plant will
give from six to eleven "iushes'' in sea-
son, each flush being potential cutting
for enarchfng on hardy root.
Cheap in Porto Rico
The mango is a little slower than the
| orange in coming to bearing age. About
six years Is the minimum But the trees
| at that age are prolific. and probably will
prove very profitable. One of the southern
growers has informed the department that
| from eleven trees he shipped in one season
$219 worth of fruit in the fourth year, and
another that at six years one of his trees
| netted him $685. The fruit of a very inferior
| sort has been shipped in small quantities
| to Chicago and sold for sixty cents a dozen,
| but mapgos In Washington bring from 81
| a dozen up. A mango plantation will take
| about forty trees to the acre, but the in
| dustry Is so new that there are no reliable
| figures to show what a plantation ought TO
| be worth per acre in this country.
The native fruit in Porto Rico is exceed
| ingly cheap, in some seasons fetching from
| five to twenty cents hundred. But even
| at that figure, with the inferior native
| fruit the department has collected statis
| tics to show that for preserving and can
| ming the cheap native fruit has its profit
| able uses. In fact the department has col
lected number of receipts for mango
| marmalade mango jelly and mango chut-
ney that sound exceedingly well and in
dictate that the preserves made at very
small initial cost in Porto Rico ought to
| find good market in this country.
Take it altogether, the mango is prom
Using tropical fruit. if one only selects the
right varieties for cultivation, and the Ag-
ricultural Department by a long course OF
experiments has succeeded in selecting the