390 cook's voyage to july, 



Jiatookas, It seldom grows higher than five feet, 

 though sometimes to eight ; and has a vast number 

 of oval compressed nuts, as large as a pippin, sticking 

 immediately to the trunk, amongst the leaves, which 

 are not eaten. There is plenty of excellent sugar-cane, 

 which is cultivated ; gourds ; bamboo ; turmeric ; 

 and a species of fig, about the size of a small cherry, 

 called matte, which, though wild, is sometimes eaten. 

 But the catalogue of uncultivated plants is too large 

 to be enumerated here. Besides the pemphis decas- 

 permum, mallococca, maba, and some other new 

 genera, described by Doctor Foster*, there are a 

 few more found here ; which perhaps the different 

 seasons of the year, and his short stay, did not give 

 him an opportunity to take notice of. Although it 

 did not appear, during our longer stay, that above a 

 fourth part of the trees, and other plants, were in 

 flower ; a circumstance absolutely necessary to 

 enable one to distinguish the various kinds. 



" The only quadrupeds besides hogs are a few rats, 

 and some dogs, which are not natives of the place, 

 but produced from some left by us in 1773, and by 

 others got from Feejee. Fowls, which are of a large 

 breed, are domesticated here. 



" Amongst the birds are parrots, somewhat smaller 

 than the common grey ones, of an indifferent green 

 on the back and wings, the tail blueish, and the rest 

 of a sooty or chocolate brown ; parroquets not 

 larger than a sparrow, of a fine yellowish green, 

 with bright azure on the crown of the head, and 

 the throat and belly red ; besides another sort as 

 large as a dove, with a blue crown and thighs, the 

 throat and under part of the head crimson, as also 

 part of the belly, and the rest a beautiful green. 



" There are owls about the size of our common 

 sort, but of a finer plumage , the cuckoos mentioned 



* See his Charactered Generum Plantarnm. Lond. 1776. 



