TROPICAL PRODUCTIONS. N° (Berth flimilar with than Bail to rect But and, no 13 d TO one familiar with the Brazil nut it châtaigne d'Amérique and noix du ognize it in the engraving we here present, although the leaf and the inclosing shell of the nuts are not so familiar to our eve. As the name implies, the nut is found in Brazil, where the natives call it juvia and the Portuguese inhabitants capucaya. In Portugal it is denominated Castañas de Marañon, and the French call nut," is the least objectionable of all the foreign appellations. The Brazil-nut tree has been till quite. recently unknown to the botanical world, although its fruit has for a long time been a staple article of food in the countries where it is produced. We owe the first description given of it to the celebrated travelers Humboldt and Bon- These two savants The dimensions of the tree are sometimes quite colossal. It has been found over one hundred feet in height. The trunk is straight, and cylindrical, with a diameter of about three feet; the bark is grayish and of a firm texture. At a distance this tree strongly resembles the chestnut. Its branches are alternate, spreading very long, covered with leaves, and drooping at their extremities. The leaves are also alternate, petiolate, oblong, and semi-coriaceous, about two and a half inches broad by fifteen in length, of a fine green, distinctly marked above with longitudinal veins, and a deep furrow corresponding with the principal nerve. Below, the veins are still more distinctly marked in relief. The petiole is over half an inch in length, fleshy, deeply sulcate within, and convex without. The flowers are of a light yellow, with white stamens, and form a kind of cluster; they are very fragrant. The calyx is tubular and six parted; corolla six petaled. The fruit appears in a spherical mass of the size of an infant's head, and often larger. This mass is divided interiorly into four cells, each one of which contains several nuts; the whole is inclosed in a green shell, or shuck, firm and glossy. The woody internal and principal envelope is rough, and strongly marked with furrows ramifying on its exterior, and is about one fourth of an inch thick. Its membraneous partitions, by which it is divided into the four above-mentioned cells, become nearly or quite obliterated as the fruit ap SMOOTH-LEAVED VANILLA. proaches maturity, although traces of them still remain. Each of these cells contains six or eight nuts, making the whole number either twenty-four or thirtytwo. They are fixed to a central columella by their inferior extremity. They are from one and a fourth to two inches in length, and of an irregular triangular form, tubercular, and of a pale crimson color. The kernel is oblong, obtusely triangular, and composed of a white substance of the same nature as the almond. It is excellent eating when fresh, but soon becomes rancid on account of the large proportion of oil which it contains. The Bertholletia is one of the most interesting plants on this continent, and should be cultivated in all the warm countries of America with as much care as walnuts and almonds are cultivated in Europe. The tree bears a large number of fruits, and each of these contains, as we have seen, from twenty-four to thirty-two large nuts which are valuable food; besides this, the oil which they furnish unites such qualities as have made them much sought for some time in Central America, and on account of which they constitute a very valuable item of Brazilian exports. Messrs. Humboldt and Bonpland say: "We were delighted to find these nuts during our voyage upon the Orinoco. For three months we had lived on poor chocolate and rice boiled in water without butter, and sometimes without salt, when we procured a large quantity of the fresh fruits of the Bertholletia. It was in the month of June, and the Indians were just returning from harvesting it." At the time of the journey of Humboldt and Bonpland to America, which was about the first of the present century, the Portuguese of Para were carrying on a trade of long standing in these nuts. They shipped cargoes of them to French Guiana, to Lisbon, to England, and to the United States. There is a species of the Bertholletia, commonly called the Paradise nut, found far in the interior of the country. It is less triangular in shape than the common Brazil nut, and of a brownish color; the meat is less oily, more tender, and better flavored. The natives make periodical visits to the interior, and bring the Paradise nut with them on their return; hence it is only seen here about once in four or five years. THE VANILLA. We recognize in the Vanilla another valuable article of commerce from the tropical regions of America. It is more widely diffused than the Bertholletia, being found not only in Brazil, but also in Mexico and Columbia, and even in some of the countries of tropical Asia, although it appears to have been introduced into these latter regions by the British. The vanilla grows in humid, shady places, among springs, or more generally in places subject to inundations in the neighborhood of salt or brackish waters. It flowers in May, and its fruit comes to maturity about the last of September. Several distinct species of the same genus have for a long time been confounded with the aromatic vanilla. The best known of the species is found widely disseminated in Mexico. It is distinguished by botanists as the Smooth-leaved Vanilla. The vanilla of commerce is nothing less than the prepared fruit of the latter species. This fruit, as we receive it, is not more than three fourths of its natural size; it is deeply wrinkled, its surface oily, its color a brownish black, its pulp soft and brown, shedding a powerful, yet savory odor; its flavor warm, piquant, and agreeable. The principal varieties of the vanilla are known in commerce as the Pompona or Bova, so named by the Spaniards, which has a coarse taste and strong smell. The variety Batarde has less taste and smell, but the true vanilla has a delicate flavor and a delicious odor. Its color, when of a good quality, is of a rich reddish brown, and it should be neither too moist nor too dry. When one of the well-conditioned pods is opened it is found filled with a black, oily, balsamic liquor, in which float an infinity of little black, almost imperceptible seeds, and it has an odor so lively and penetrating that if breathed for a long time it would induce drowsiness or cause a kind of intoxication. In Central America it would be easy to give the vanilla a systematic cultivation. Plantations of it could doubtless be made in a short time, and the abundant harvests would find ready market, both in Europe and America, but the indolent inhabitants content themselves with gathering that which grows spontaneously. The vanilla has for a long time been cultivated in Guiana and Cayenne, and an effort has recently been made to introduce it into Europe with the promise of abundant success. Vanillas have been obtained which, in quality, fully equal those imported from Mexico. The vanillas undergo much preparation ere they are fit for commerce. A certain number of pods being strung, they are just dipped into boiling water, which blanches them on the instant; they are then exposed to the open air and sunlight. After a day's exposure they are gently rubbed with oil, and then dried slowly. Each one is tied with a fine thread of cotton to prevent the separation of the valves, and the superfluous viscous liquor is drawn off at the end. Having thus lost their viscidity, they rapidly acquire the various properties which we have already mentioned. The vanilla was formerly employed in medicine as a tonic and stimulant, but at the present time its use in therapeutics is wholly abandoned. It might always be used advantageously mingled with some dishes to facilitate digestion in dyspeptic subjects; but it is as a perfume that the vanilla is mostly sought; it is used to flavor creams, sherbets, and especially chocolate, to which it communicates a most agreeable taste and odor. It forms a large item of our importations, and as the duty is quite heavy, it is estimated that we pay out several millions of dollars annually for this condiment and perfume. It now only remains to point out the botanical characteristics of vanilla. It belongs to the numerous and brilliant family of the orchids, and has for its generic traits an irregular corolla, a single terminal anther, the pollen in two small granular masses, etc. The stem is green, cylindrical, and mostly of the thickness of one's finger, which does not sensibly vary in the whole length; from time to time it throws out simple tendrils, by the aid of which it fixes itself in the fissures of rocks, or climbs trees, gaining often a considerable elevation. The root is also creeping, very long, tender, succulent, and of a pale red. The family of orchids embraces many grotesque but splendid genera and species, which are among the most interesting objects of our hot-houses. The fruit is a sort of silique, indehiscent, cylindric, slightly curved, of the thickness of one's finger, and six or seven inches in length, its walls and divisions thick and fleshy, and the cavity filled with a pulp, in which are scattered the numerous little black globular seeds. It is this pulp which constitutes the aroma known under the name of vanilla. FRANCIS XAVIER. N the year that Columbus died Francis Xavier was born. His birth-place was the castle of Xavier, in Navarre. He was illimitably illustrious by descent: of gentle, noble, royal race. He was the youngest of a large family: brought up at home for a while with no strict discipline, but yet in a somewhat instructive way: though free, not lawless; wandering at will amid the wild pine-forests and dark, precipitous rocks of his Pyrenean home. And so, amid the silent majesty of surrounding nature, and under the impressive influences of a religious household, he grows up an enthusiastic and somewhat superstitious boy; contemplative, complying, gentle, but withal of a robust, manly cast; studious at times, but also fond of athletic sports, fondest of all excitement, whether of danger or of pleasure; fitfully idle and ambitious; an uncommon compound. All his brothers chose to be soldiers; he would be a scholar, that he might thus add to his family distinctions that only ornament they wanted, learning. So he goes up to the University of Paris at eighteen: a fine youth full of life and buoyancy; well favored every way; above the middle size, well formed, with blue eyes and dark auburn hair: of pleasing rather than of remarkable bearing. He lives at college (the college of St. Barbara) much as other youths of his time, only more successfully uniting study with pleasure than most. He takes his degree of Master of Arts at twenty, and is appointed to teach philosophy at Beauvais College soon after, though he still keeps his rooms in St. Barbe. He does this with applause; and when he has been thus engaged for a year and a half, or more, a strange man-lame and mean looking, and much older than men usually go up to college, perhaps fifteen years older than himself who has just entered as a pensioner of the college, comes into rooms near his. You could not have made much out of this man's appearance as to who and what he was; nor would the stories you would have heard in col lege, though true enough, have helped you much. They say that he is a nobleman's son, of Biscay; that he has been an officer, brave and chivalrous, and that he made a noble defense at Pampeluna in the late war. And they have got a story about his lameness; how he was wounded at that siege, and how he was such a vanity-loving man at that time that, after his leg had been set and got well, he had it broken again and re-set merely because he thought it not quite so well shaped as it might have been made. However, as I have said, this would not have taught you much as to what kind of a man he now is. Be sure this man is more than he looks; how self-possessed he is, and yet not forbidding, and what measured musical speech is his such qualities are not vulgar ones. Xavier begins to be a good deal with him. There is a certain chiseled statuary symmetry about the man, attractive but not satisfying: Xavier admires him, but does not very much like him either; he is so spiritual, so unworldly; caring so little for pleasure, and talking so much about the soul. He is not austere, indeed, at least toward others, though exceedingly so toward himself; but he is so unexcitable; if not an iron, yet a marble man. And, besides, he is so uncouth in his dress, so dirty, so slovenly; altogether so singular. Xavier ventures to rally him, to ridicule him; but not very harshly, the stranger is so solemn and so meek. The lame man likes Xavier, though he does not like his way of living, for Xavier is becoming very gay. He takes many opportunities, both when Xavier is busy and when he is alone, to ask him, what it will profit him if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul. As they walk together after lectures, and Xavier eagerly urges some scheme of amusement, he is only answered by the words, Francis, what shall a man receive in exchange for his soul? These words, so often, so calmly, so solemnly said, troubled Xavier; and the more so as he is getting into difficulties otherwise by his worldly pleasure-hunting life. The lame man is quite as kind as he is solemn, and as able to help him out of his difficulties as he is willing. Xavier learns by degrees how his monitor was once as he is now; how he was brought up at court and as a soldier; and how he lived in pleasure for thirty years of his life, and how he now counts himself to have been dead while he so lived; and how a great change came over his spirit on his recovery from an illness, and then reading the "Life of Christ" and the "Lives of the Saints," so that from that time old things began to pass away and all things became new to him; and how, mindful of sick-bed vows, he went to the abbey of the Benedictines at Mountserrat, and hung up his sword there, and set forth with a staff and a wallet, and all lame as he was, walked bareheaded and barefooted straightway to Jerusalem. Xavier finds that though he is a tutor and his friend but a pupil, his proper place is at his scholar's feet. And so there he sits; and when he learns that this man's anxiety to become a scholar, and at the same time to discipline himself in humility, was so great that at the age of thirty-three, noble as he was by birth, and having served so conspicuously in the wars, he goes to a common day school at Barcelona, and begins at the beginning of his grammar just as any other of the scholars, and bears all manner of jests from the boys with the greatest good humor; when, I say, Xavier learns all this, and sees how strict he is in all observances of the Church, how self-denying and how pure, he begins to believe he has been ridiculing a saint unawares. He begins to listen to him in quite another spirit, and thus listening he learns, and learning he loves. He associates with him oftener; they become to be seldom apart. The peculiar penetrating speech of the stranger distils itself upon Xavier's heart as dew, and freshens it in its feverishness; he grows to like nothing so well; nay, now he cannot do without it. For a change has come over Xavier's soul; new powers are awakening within him; his eyes are being enlightened; the visible is growing dim, the invisible is coming out into the day. He struggles hard with his new thoughts, but ultimately vainly; for after five years' daily intercourse Xavier yields himself as heartily as tardily to the solemn influence of that strange, mean-looking, lame pensioner of St. Barbara-IGNATIUS LOYOLA. In company with five others these men at length band together, and on the eve of the Feast of the Assumption, 1534, they repair to the subterranean chapel of Montmartre, and there, amid the darkness, at dead of night, dedicate themselves by |