Potynesia, 483 



sugar estates ; and, when we recollect how often negroes go to 

 sleep in the open air, the wonder is that similar incidents djti 

 not occur more frequently. — TVilliain Sells, Surgeon, MMtCSL 

 Kingston, Surrey, January 1. 1832. * \. 



An extract from Jameson's Journal, exhibiting cases parafl^ 

 to the above two, may here be fitly introduced. — J. D. ""J 



Various instances are on record of winged insects depositing 

 their eggs in the human body. Mr. Bracey Clark gives the 

 case of an ox gadfly which produced bots in the jaw of a 

 w^oman. Lempriere records the case of a lady in Jamaica 

 who died of the maggots of a large blue fly, common in the 

 West Indies. The 6B'strus /zominis, or human gadfly, is not 

 often met with; but in Jameson's Journal for April, 1830, an 

 authenticated case is given of one of the larvae having attained 

 the perfect state in the back part of the arm of a sailor. 

 This sailor, while at work, " usually wore his shirt-sleeves 

 rolled up above his elbows; and while in George Towii| 

 Demerara, he generally slept on deck. It is easy, then, to 

 suppose that the (E'sivus, or parent fly, had availed itself of ai 

 proper opportunity to deposit its egg upon his arm, probably 

 by a slight puncture of the skin, by means of the ovipositbi* 

 with which it is furnished. When the larva had attained its 

 full size, it dropped out, instinctively searching for a covermg 

 of natural earth, in which to undergo the intermediate state 

 of pupa, which it is destined to assume for a time before it 

 becomes a winged insect. The instinct of the parent, howeve^ 

 admirable under ordinary circumstances, was, of course, insuf-» 

 ficient to provide against the accident of Killock's (the sailor's 

 name) being a seafaring man ; and the larva could not have 

 attained the perfect state, for want of the proper nidus in 

 which the pupa is accustomed to repose." {Jameson'k 

 Journal, April 1830, p. 287.) J- 



POLYNESIA. f 



Botany of the South Sea Islands. — The following esculent 

 plants and timber trees are found in the Island of Tahiti, 

 in the Southern Pacific Ocean : — ^.^ 



Esculent Plants. — Artocarpus incisa and its varieties (the bread-fruit 

 tree) are among the valuable indigenous productions of the fertile arid 

 beautiful Island of Tahiti, where, from some trees bearing at later periods at 

 some parts of the island, the fruit can be procured during the whole year. 

 This tree is also indigenous to the islands forming the Eastern Archipelago ; 

 but the fruit does not attain the perfection of the Polynesian : it is called 

 by the Malays, sukun. They have also a variety with seeds, which is 

 called by a distinct name, kalawi. This variety I have seen at Erromanga 

 (New Hebrides group), and it is also found at the Navigators' and Marquesas 

 Islands ;, I have seen, at the former place, varieties similar to those whiqlfc 

 at Tahiti are destitute of seeds ; although, at Navigators', the fruits were 

 full of them. There are no species at the Society Islands containing seeds : 



I I 2 



