Prudent folks are always impressing the fact upon juveniles that stone fruits are unwholesome, but what boy or girl can resist the cry of 'Cherry Ripe!' or avoid the luscious plum, and the still more luscious apricot, peach, or nectarine, when it falls in his or her way? Indeed, we do not believe that even the most prudent of mothers can always be proof against the temptation of these much-maligned delicacies.

As regards apricots, peaches, and nectarines, we in England are never likely to get a surfeit of either, for they cost too much to grow in this part of the world, ever to become a food for the million. In truth, there are millions who probably never taste a peach, or a nectarine; and although apricots are more plentiful, being imported, half ripe, in boxes from France, yet these are also too dear for poor people to buy, and when bought are not satisfactory, the flavour being poor compared with the ripe Moor Park apricot grown on a sunny wall in England. The envy of the British youth is great when he hears that in America, and in South Africa and Australia, pigs are fed upon peaches, and he wishes they would just send some of them over here; but, in truth, these fruits are too delicate for export, unless bottled or dried, although a consignment of peaches has recently arrived from South Africa in excellent condition, packed each in a separate compartment like eggs, and wrapped in cotton wool. Many of these fruits come to us in tins and bottles from America, but they seem to lose flavour in the process, and will never take the place of the highly-cultivated wall-fruits of England at the tables of the rich, although convenient as a substitute, when the superior article is deficient or out of season. The best mode of importing these fruits is in a dried form - especially in the case of apricots. The colonists of the Cape prepare apricots in various ways: one called 'meibos' - known also as ' matrimony,' from being sour and sweet - is very good. The fruit is, as it were, crystallised by being dipped in a strong ley, dried in the sun, and then laid in sugar; but this is never seen in England, except when brought over by individuals as a present to friends. We have seen and tasted another preparation of this fruit, and of peaches, in the form of paste. The fruit is peeled, slightly boiled without water, mashed, and spread out very thin on buttered boards or sheets of paper, dried in the sun, and folded up like paper, forming a pleasant refreshment in travelling, or at any time when a little fruit is desired and not otherwise obtainable.

It need hardly be said that all these fruits, although brought to great perfection by careful cultivation in England, are natives of sunnier climes. The peach and nectarine, which are so closely allied as to be virtually the same fruit - although one has a smooth coat and the other a rough one - belong to the same botanical family as the almond, and are supposed to have been brought originally from Persia by the Romans. The peach has been cultivated in England since the sixteenth century, and seems to have been introduced wherever civilised man has appeared. The natives of South Africa are indebted to the traveller Burchell for it, he having given a bag of peach stones as the best present he could think of, to the chief of the Bachapins, upon which he remarks, 'Nor did I fail to impress on his mind a just idea of their value and nature, by telling him that they would produce trees which would continue every year to yield, without further trouble, abundance of large fruit of a more agreeable flavour than any which grew in the country of the Bachapins.' Whether the natives appreciated the wisdom of the benevolent traveller in making this gift to them, and whether they continue to cultivate the fruit, is not known; but the colonists of South Africa generally do so largely, finding the tree very easily reared and the fruit excellent. It is not, however, indigenous to South Africa, although a small apricot is found growing wild there.

The country recently traversed by the pioneer force of the Chartered Company would seem at one time to have been quite a garden of fruits, as the following extract from a letter of one of the men shows: - 'I called the country around these parts (Matabeleland, about one hundred and fifty miles from Mount Hampden) the land of fruits, for the whole place is like a great orchard of fruit trees growing wild. Although the winter season (July), many are loaded with fruit. Imagine riding for miles and miles under the shade of wild orange trees, branches weighed down with fruit, and more of others than I can name - wild grapes, guavas, limes, plums, apples, and pomegranates - a veritable garden of Eden, and this under a cloudless sky and delightful climate.'

The apricot belongs to the plum tribe (Prunus Armeniaca), a tribe very widely distributed, and including the cherry, the laurel, the sloe, and a vast number of cultivated species of plum, chief among which is the delicious greengage, the Reine Claude of the French. Some naturalists believe that the apricot has been developed from the wild African species; but it is generally supposed to be a native of the East, where it grows in great abundance, from China and Japan to the Caucasus. It is perhaps a greater favourite than the peach in cookery, making a most excellent jam, apropos of which I may say that the pulp, now imported in tins, is almost equal to the fresh fruit for this delicate preserve; but it requires its full weight of sugar and a few bitter almonds as a substitute for the kernels. Apricots crystallised and in syrup are also much esteemed, and in all these forms our colonies might supply the English market quite as well as the French do now.

There is also another mode of utilising these abundant gifts of Nature to sunny climes, which is in the making of noyau, or ratafia, from the kernels. Years ago we used to collect the kernels of all the apricots and peaches consumed in the house, putting them into a bottle filled up with brandy, and this home-made ratafia was the very best flavouring we could ever obtain for custards, puddings, etc. Surely, in countries where these fruits are so superabundant as in South Africa, and where brandy is also largely manufactured, something might be made both of the fruit and its kernels.