oach give a ball, him no ask da fowls.'

Great and worthy exertions are made, every London Season, for the
conversion of the Negro and the Heathen, and the abolition of their
barbarous customs and dances. It is to be hoped that the Negro and
the Heathen will some day show their gratitude to us, by sending
missionaries hither to convert the London Season itself, dances and
all; and assist it to take the beam out of its own eye, in return
for having taken the mote out of theirs.

CHAPTER XVI: A PROVISION GROUND

The 'provision grounds' of the Negroes were very interesting. I had
longed to behold, alive and growing, fruits and plants which I had
heard so often named, and seen so often figured, that I had expected
to recognise many of them at first sight; and found, in nine cases
out of ten, that I could not. Again, I had longed to gather some
hints as to the possibility of carrying out in the West Indian
islands that system of 'Petite Culture'--of small spade farming--
which I have long regarded, with Mr. John Stuart Mill and others, as
not only the ideal form of agriculture, but perhaps the basis of any
ideal rustic civilisation. And what scanty and imperfect facts I
could collect I set down here.

It was a pleasant sensation to have, day after day, old names
translated for me into new facts. Pleasant, at least to me: not so
pleasant, I fear, to my kind companions, whose courtesy I taxed to
the uttermost by stopping to look over every fence, and ask, 'What
is that? And that?' Let the reader who has a taste for the
beautiful as well as the useful in horticulture, do the same, and
look in fancy over the hedge of the nearest provision ground.

There are orange-trees laden with fruit: who knows not them? and
that awkward-boughed tree, with huge green fruit, and deeply-cut
leaves a foot or more across--leaves so grand that, as one of our
party often suggested, their form ought to be introduced into
architectural ornamentation, and to take the place of the Greek
acanthus, which they surpass in beauty--that is, of course, a Bread-
fruit tree.

That round-headed tree, with dark rich Portugal laurel foliage,
arranged in stars at the end of each twig, is the Mango, always a
beautiful object, whether in orchard or in open park. In the West
Indies, as far as I have seen, the Mango has not yet reached the
huge size of its ancestors in Hindostan. There--to judge, at least,
from