The Indo-Chinese fruits are of great excellence of flavor, and almost every day of the year furnishes a new variety. The best oranges are plentiful; pineapples are a drug in the market; lemons, citrons, pomegranates are abundant and very cheap. As the season advances, mangoes, guavas, custard-apples and the like follow in quick succession; on some kinds of trees buds, flowers, green and ripened fruit may be found at the same time. The small mahogany-colored mangosteen is perhaps the most popular of tropical fruits. One species of the sac has a fruit weighing from ten to forty pounds, which cut in thick slices will supply a meal to twenty persons, and a single tree will produce a hundred such fruit; the bright yellow wood of this tree is used for dyeing the priests’ robes. The tamarind grows to an enormous height and lives for centuries; under its shade the Siamese assemble for most of their social games. The durian, a child of the forest, has something the appearance of an elm; the large fruit, cased in a thick hard rind as difficult to break as a cocoanut-shell and covered with strong spines, gives a dangerous blow in falling. The five shells within each contain several seeds rather larger than a pigeon’s egg filled with custard-like pulp of a strong odor and unique flavor. The plantain or banana has some forty varieties, with fruit varying greatly in size as well as in flavor. It is the first fruit given to babies, and, the Moslems say, was the gift of Allah to the Prophet in his old age when he lost his teeth. The trees bear fruit but once, and then are followed by others from the same root. The useful bamboo is a tree-like plant with a jointed stem, producing branches with willow-shaped leaves, which wave in the wind, giving an elegant feathery appearance. So rapid is its growth, sometimes two feet in a single day, that the plant attains its height of sixty to seventy feet in a few months. It is said to have seven admirable qualities――strength, lightness, roundness, straightness, smoothness, hollowness and divisibility. The short succulent shoots are served on the table like asparagus, pickled or candied. According to the Chinese proverb, the grains are “more abundant when rice fails.” The stems furnish bottles, buckets, baskets, fishing-rods, posts, bridges, walls, floors, roofs, and even the string that lashes together rafter and beam of the common native house in Indo-China. [Illustration: THE LOTUS.]