With the exception of the false bottom, all the above suggestions were carefully attended to by the gardeners who were in charge of the chinchona-plants during the voyage to India; the partial failures which attended some of the relays from South America could not, under the circumstances, have been avoided by any human foresight; and, as the general result of my arrangements has been to introduce all the valuable kinds of quinine-yielding plants into India, we have every reason to congratulate ourselves on the success of our labours. With the chinchona-plants I brought from Peru a supply of seeds of the chirimoya, of aji-pepper, and of the _Schinus molle_, all of which are coming up well on the Neilgherry hills.[388] They have most of the other kinds of _Anonas_ in India, but the chirimoya fruit, the most exquisite of all, has yet to be raised. He who has not tasted the chirimoya has yet to learn what fruit is. "The pine-apple, the mangosteen, and the chirimoya," says Dr. Seemann, "are considered the finest fruits in the world. I have tasted them in those localities in which they are supposed to attain their highest perfection--the pine-apple in Guayaquil, the mangosteen in the Indian archipelago, and the chirimoya on the slopes of the Andes; and, if I were called upon to act the part of a Paris, I would without hesitation assign the apple to the chirimoya. Its taste indeed surpasses that of every other fruit, and Haenke was quite right when he called it the masterpiece of nature."[389]