Oviedo extols the pine-apple above all the fruits which grew in the
famous gardens of his time, and above all that he had tasted in his
travels in Spain, France, England, Germany, the whole of Italy, Sicily,
the Tyrol, and the whole of the Low Countries. "No fruit," says he,
"have I known or seen in all these parts, nor do I think that in the
world there is one better than it, or equal to it, in all those points
which I shall now mention, and which are, beauty of appearance,
sweetness of smell, taste of excellent savour; so that there being three
senses out of the five which can be gratified by fruit, such is its
excellence above all other fruits or dainties in the world, that it
gratifies those three, and even the fourth also; to wit the touch. As
for the fifth, that is to say, the hearing, fruit, indeed, can neither
hear nor listen, but in its place the reader may hear and attend to what
is said of this fruit, and he will perceive that I do not deceive myself
in what I shall say of it. For albeit fruit can as little be said to
possess any of the other four senses, in relation to the which I have,
as above, spoken, of these I am to be understood in the exercise and
person of him who eats, not of the fruit itself, which hath no life,
save the vegetative one, and wants both the sensitive and rational, all
three of which exist in man. And he, looking at these pines, and
smelling to them, and tasting them, and feeling them, will justly,
considering these four parts or particularities, attribute to it the
principality above all other fruits."
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