Agriculture, although rapidly assuming as it should the dignity of a science, still has its caprices or apparent contradictions. And so it happens that the choicest flavored and highest priced bananas of the world are grown in the waterworn pockets of almost barren dog-teethed rocks--“los dientes de perro” of the extreme eastern end of Cuba, just back of Cape Maysi. Here the coast rises from sea level in a series of four or five steps or comparatively flat plateaux, each some four or five hundred feet above the other, until an altitude of two thousand feet is reached. The rocks are soft limestone and in the millions of waterworn pockets, the leaves and dust of the forest jungle have left their deposit for ages. In this shallow soil bananas not only grow luxuriously but have a remarkably delicate and delicious flavor, essentially their own. The secret of this wondrous growth and par excellence however, lies not alone in the rocky soil, but in the fact that generous nature at this point, contributes an abundant shower of rain almost every day in the year. The low, heavily waterladen clouds of the West Indian seas, driven by easterly winds strike this series of table lands, one rising above the other, and shower the lands with daily rains. Hence it is that while the average rainfall of Cuba is 54 inches, this series of table land of Cape Maysi has an annual rainfall of 125 inches. The result is that in spite of difficult access and a cultivation confined to the hoe, millions of bunches of choice bananas are grown and shipped from the mouth of the Little Yumuri every year. United Fruit steamers on their way north from South and Central American banana fields stop at the above landing to take on a top dressing of fancy fruit. Owing to the fact that the banana has practically no season, or rather that it may bear in any month, four suckers of varying ages are set out in each hill, from which four bunches of fruit, some three months apart, will result during the year. With four hundred stands or hills to the acre, the annual yield should be, approximately 1,600 bunches, and whether the crop is disposed of in the local markets or converted into banana flour, the growing of bananas may be made one of the important industries of Cuba. Patient toil and judicious selection have made the modern pineapple one of our most delightful of all fruits, in addition to which, in those countries not too far removed from markets, it has assumed an important place as a commercial industry. The fruit of the pineapple, like that of the strawberry, is a strange compound or consolidation of hundreds of little fruits, in one symmetrical cone, tinted when ripe with shades varying from greenish yellow to golden red or orange. Like the strawberry, it is a ground fruit that must be planted and cultivated along the lines that bring best results with ordinary field crops.