THE PLANT WORLD 99 



horses are very fond of the leaves, which are often gathered by the natives 

 for fodder. Young bread-fruit trees must be protected from animals. 

 The seeds of the dug dug, or fertile bread-fruit, when roasted, taste very 

 much like chestnuts. The bark is tough, and in some islands is used for 

 making tapa, or bark cloth. When wounded a milky gum exudes from 

 the tree, which, like rubber, soon becomes viscid. In its fresh condition 

 it is used for sizing for whitewash and for a medium in mixing paints. 

 When older it is used for stopping up the seams of canoes, boats, and 

 water troughs. 



On our way back from the village we were caught in a heavy shower 

 and had to put up the curtains on the vehicles for protection. The Solace 

 leaves to-morrow for home. Captain Dunlap has promised to get me 

 some navel orange-trees in San Francisco. Those I was bringing with me 

 on the Brutus died on the wa3^ owing to our long and unexpected stay 

 in Samoa. 



The U. S. S. Nero arrived here on September 7th, having completed 

 a zigzag survey from Dingala Bay, Island of Luzon, to this island. 

 Commander Belknap has been succeeded by Lieutenant-Commander H. 

 M. Hodges as her commanding officer. She ran a direct line of sound- 

 ings to the Philippines, with a view to selecting a route for a trans-Pacific 

 telegraph cable, taking observations at the same time for temperature and 

 for characteristics of the bottom. On her return trip she is zigzagging 

 across her former track, measuring depths, taking temperatures, and 

 getting specimens of the bottom at equidistant stations twenty knots 

 (nautical miles) apart and at the turning points of the line. She left 

 here on the 9th for Japan, to discover if possible a practicable route for a 

 branch cable between this island and Yokohama. She goes directly to 

 Yokohama and will zigzag back again to this island. From here she 

 returns to the United States, via the Midway Islands and Honolulu, 

 making zigzag soundings all the way. 



One of the most interesting results of the Nero^s survey has been the 

 discovery of a submarine abyss between the Midway Islands and Guam, 

 which is the deepest yet discovered in the world. To avoid this abyss 

 the cable route between the Midway Islands and Guam will have to be 

 deflected. From Honolulu to the Midway Islands there is an almost level 

 plain of soft mud about 2,700 fathoms below the surface. From Midway 

 to Guam for about a thousand miles there is another plain a little more 

 than 3,000 fathoms deep, broken occasionally by submarine reefs and 

 mountain ranges ; then suddenly, a short distance to the eastward of the 

 great submarine volcanic range of mountains running nearly north and 

 south, which, rising above the surface, forms the chain of the Ladrones, 

 or Mariannes, and near the latitude of Guam, this plain sinks into the 

 valley known as the Nero Deep, lacking only 66 feet of a depth of six 



