ON THE USES OF PANDANUS OB, SCREW PALM." 63 



Roxburgh states that the lower yellow pulpy part of the drupes is 

 sometimes eaten by the natives during times of famine, as also the 

 tender white base of the leaves, either raw or boiled ; the roots are used 

 by basket-makers to tie their work with, and he adds that they are also 

 used for corks. Small indeed are these results as compared with the 

 manifold purposes to which the tree is put by the South Sea islander. 

 Roxburgh notices that the leaves are composed of longitudinal, tough, 

 and useful fibres like those of the pine apple. Yet this economical 

 product has hitherto been neglected, though the tree is so common in 

 parts that hedges are made of it. In the Nicobar Islands it is called the 

 Mellore or bread-fruit, being probably used there for food as it is in the 

 South Pacific. In the Mauritius it is extensively employed in the manu- 

 facture of sugar and coffee bags and for export. " Hedge-rows or avenues 

 are formed of it round plantations, or along the sides of the many roads 

 which intersect them, and the leaves, as fast as they attain maturity, are 

 cut till the tree arrives at its full growth, when the production of new 

 leaves being sl-ower and less useful, younger plants are resorted to." So 

 wrote Colonel Hardwicke in 1811. Forbes Royle gives but little information 

 beyond quoting Roxburgh and Hardwicke, and the plant in India has not 

 received much attention. Voight says that in China and Cochin elephants 

 are fed on it. Mr. Stonehewer Cooper, in his " Coral Lands of the Pacific," 

 gives an account of the Pandanus, which is evidently taken from my 

 brother's writings, the similarity of expression proving this ; he has acknow- 

 ledged much of his information so gathered, but might have done more in 

 that way ; however, he has added nothing more to our knowledge of the plant 

 than what will be gained in the following paper, written years before Mr. 

 Cooper's book was published, beyond calling it in one place Pandanus ulilis, 

 which, according to Voight, is a synonym of P. odoratissimus ; and 

 stating in another that he does not know of anything that will approach the 

 leaves of the Pandanus tree as a paper-making material.* This is a point 

 worth experimenting on, and it is with a view to bring the many qualities of 

 this plant before the public in India, and interest men in what has been hitherto 

 neglected as a jungly thing of no value that I have extracted from my 

 brother's papers, which I hope to publish some day in extenso, the following 

 notes on a worthy rival of the Bamboo and the Cocoanut. 



" Among the most ubiquitous of vegetable products throughout the Pacific 

 is the Pandanus or Screw Palm. It is called ' Fara ' in most native 

 tongues, and would seem to a stranger to be as ugly and prickly as it is 



* I find that Mr. Coopei's account of the Pandanus, as well as the remark about 

 its being a good material for the manufacture of paper, is taken verbatim without 

 acknowledgment from my brother's report to the New Zealand Government on the 

 Islands of the South Pacific. 



