Japonica,_ in Madeira called the loquat and elsewhere the Japanese medlar: it grows wild in the Brazil, where the people distil from it. [Footnote: I cannot yet decide whether its birthplace is Japan or South America, whose plants have now invaded Western India and greatly altered the vegetation.] The chief vegetables were the watercress, grown in private gardens; onions, large and mild as the Spanish; _calavances_, or beans; _okras_ or _gumbos_, the _bhendi_ of India (_Hibiscus esculentus_), the best thickening for soup; _bengwas_, or egg-plants; yams (_Dioscorea bulbifera_) of sorts; bitter Cassada (_Jatropha manihot_) and the sweet variety (_Jatropha janipha_); garlic; kokos (_Colocasia esculenta_); potatoes, which the steamers are beginning to bring from England, not from Madeira; tomatoes like musket-balls, but very sweet and wholesome; and the _batata_, (_Convolvulus patatus_, or sweet potato), which whilom made 'kissing comfits.' The edibles consisted of' fufu' (plantain-paste); of 'cankey,' a sour pudding of maize-flour; of ginger-cake; of cassava-balls finely levigated, and of sweetened 'agadi,' native bread in lumps, wrapped up in plantain-leaves. Toddy was the usual drink offered for sale. The butchers' yard, near the market, is no longer a 'ragged and uncleanly strip of ground.' The long-horned cattle, small, mostly humpless, and resembling the brindled and dun Alderney cow, are driven in from the Pulo (Fulah) country. I have described the beef as tasting not unlike what one imagines a knacker's establishment to produce, and since that time I have found but scant improvement. It is sold on alternate days with mutton, the former costing 6_d_., the latter 9_d_. a pound. Veal, so bad in England and so good in Southern Europe, is unknown. The long, lean, hairy black-and-white sheep do not supply an excellent article. Goats and kids are plentiful, and the flesh would be good if it had any taste. Hogs abound, as in Ireland; but no one eats pork, for the best of reasons. The poultry-list comprises small tough fowls (l0_d_. to 2_s_.), partridges, ducks (2_s_. 6_d_.), geese, especially the spur-winged from Sherbro, and the Muscovy or Manilla duck--a hard-fleshed, insipid bird, whose old home was South American Paraguay--turkeys (10_s_. to 15_s_.), and the _arripiada_, or frizzly chicken, whose feathers stand on end. Milk is scarce and dear. Englishmen raw in the tropics object to milch-goats and often put up with milch-pigs, which are said to be here kept for the purpose. I need not tell all the old tale, 'Goat he go die; pig he go for bush,' &c. Butter (1_s_. 8_d_. in 2-lb. tins) is oily and rancid, with the general look of cartgrease, in this tropical temperature. It is curious that the Danish and Irish dairies cannot supply the West African public with a more toothsome article.