1839.] THE BREAD-FRUIT. 183 



arms. He vaults up with astonishing rapidity — his body 

 swinging clear from the tree at every spring — and lowers 

 down the nuts with the long rope. The cocoas are so pro- 

 ductive that the nuts are often sold at one dollar per hundred. 



Valuable and important as are the productions which have 

 been described, the bread-fruit, after all, is the vegetable 

 Corypheus of the Society Islands. The tree grows to the 

 size of a middling oak, is umbrageous, and has its broad 

 leaves deeply notched, like those of the fig. The trunk rises 

 to the height of ten or twelve feet without a branch, and has 

 a rough light-colored bark. The foliage is a dark green, rich 

 and glossy. Its fruit is circular or oval, from eight to nine 

 inches long, and averaging about six inches in diameter ; it 

 is covered with hexagonal warts, and grows in clusters of 

 five or six ; at first it is of a pea-green color, subsequently 

 changing to brown, and, when fully ripe, assuming a yellow- 

 ish tinge. The pulp is white and soft, partly farinaceous and 

 partly fibrous, and in its ripe state is yellow and juicy. In- 

 side of the pulp there is a hard core extending from the stalk 

 to the crown, about which there are a few imperfect seeds. 

 The fruit is gathered before it is entirely ripe, for it soon de- 

 cays ; it continues in season above eight months in the year, 

 and is so prolific that two or three trees will yield a sufficiency 

 for the yearly support of one person.* 



This delightful esculent is boiled or baked, or roasted under 

 ground, after the true native fashion. The second rind is 

 scraped off, and the interior is eaten in the same manner as 

 bread. It has a pure white, mealy appearance, resembling 

 potatoes, and an agreeable sweet taste, between that of wheat 



* There are, in fact, two species of bread-fruit — the artocarpus integrifolia, 

 and the artocarpus incisa. The leaves of the former are not sinuated ; it grows 

 chiefly on the continent of Asia, and is called jaca by the inhabitants ; the fruit 

 is very large, often exceeding thirty pounds in weight. The latter is the proper 

 bread-fruit of the South Sea, originally discovered in the Ladrones. Through 

 the exertions of Captain Bligh,— who had just left Tahiti, while on an errand 

 of this kind, when the crew of the Bounty mutinied, — and at the expense of 

 the English government, plants of the bread-fruit were introduced into the West 

 Indies. It is easily cultivated there, but does not excel the banana. 



