When the fruit begins to ripen it falls daily and almost hourly, and accidents not unfrequently happen to persons walking or working under the trees.

When the durion strikes a man in its fall it produces a dreadful wound, the strong spines tearing open the flesh, whilst the blow itself is very heavy; but from this very circumstance death rarely ensues, the copious effusion of blood preventing the inflammation which might otherwise take place.

A Dyak chief informed me that he had been struck by a durion falling on his head, which he thought would certainly have caused his death, yet he recovered in a very short time." Both the natives of the Malayan Archipelago and strangers residing there regard the durion as superior to all other kinds of fruit--in short, the finest in the world.

The old traveller, Luischott, writing of it as early as 1599, says that in flavour it surpasses all other fruits.
While another old traveller, Doctor Paludanus, thus speaks of it: "This fruit is of a hot and humid nature.

To those not used to it, it seems at first to smell like rotten onions, but immediately they have tasted it they prefer it to all other food.