Man himself is, and has always been, a great eater of fruit. Not only so, but he has enormously improved and altered wild fruits until they are modified into monsters of the most extraordinary kind. The ordinary wild gooseberry weighs about 5 dwt. But even in the year 1786 some of the cultivated forms weighed double this amount (10 dwt.), and in 1852 gooseberries which weighed more than 37 dwt. were in existence. What size the largest big gooseberry may be this year is not very easy to say, because the public Press is at slack times too energetic about the question. The most usual way of improving fruits is by selecting the finest specimens for reproduction. It is by this means that the original wild banana, which is a rather small fruit with very large seeds and very little flesh, has been altered into something like 150 varieties, of which the immense majority have no seed at all. This is a very extraordinary fact, because the seed is the reason for the existence of the fruit. Of course, all such varieties must be reproduced by suckers (like the banana) or by grafts, or in some such non-sexual manner. Seedless varieties exist of the Cucumber, Fig, German Medlar, Diospyros, and Orange. In the case of seedless varieties of the Vine, it has been found that it is necessary to carry pollen to the flowers to fertilize them, and the seedless fruit is also very much smaller in this case, not more than a quarter of the size of one that has seeds. The following instance is typical of the manner in which many well-known kinds of fruit have been developed, though the perseverance shown by Mr. Gideon is certainly not common. About the year 1855 this gentleman began planting apple trees of about thirty named varieties. For nine years he continued his experiments. He not only planted trees, but also sowed apple seed sufficient to produce a thousand trees every year. Yet the cold winters were so severe that at the end of ten years one small seedling crab apple was the solitary survivor. One seedling of this turned out to be hardy enough for the climate of Minnesota, and this, the "wealthy" apple, has been of great importance to the Northern Mississippi growers. It is to be hoped that the name has been justified in Mr. Gideon's case. [Illustration: _Stereo Copyright, Underwood & Underwood_ _London & New York_ BANANA CARRIERS IN JAMAICA A West Indian negro thinks nothing of walking twenty miles with loads such as these.]