i85 



visited Guam during the fruiting season. Dampier describes the 

 fruit and the native methods of preparing it for food and remarks 

 that it is about the size of a penny loaf when wheat is five shil- 

 lings the bushel." Nearly fifty years later Lord Anson visited the 

 same island and reported that the fruit was about the size of a two- 

 penny loaf, from which statement Hooker reasons that wheat had 

 risen considerably in price since Dampier's time. Both of these 

 explorers were highly pleased with its quality and commented up- 

 on its usefulness as a food staple to the islanders. 



Geographical knowledge made great strides during the l/th and 

 l8th centuries through the work of the explorers who were looking 

 for gold, spices, and other marketable tropical products, and who 

 incidentally made known to the world many an unknown group of 

 islands. 



The work of Captain James Cook in charting the then "Un- 

 known Ocean" between 1768 and 1779, the last the date of his un- 

 timely death on the Sandwich Islands, is phenomenal when viewed 

 merely from a geographical point of view, but his services become 

 even more valuable when his influence on subsequent voyages and 

 general work in the Pacific is considered. Cook fully appreciated 

 the possibilities inherent in the breadfruit and lost no time in ad- 

 vertising its virtues to the English nation and in suggesting its in- 

 troduction into the West Indies. During his second voyage (17/2- 

 1775) the two Forsters, father and son, accompanied the expedition 

 as naturalists, and as a result of their collections gave the scientific 

 name Artocarpiis conmuinis to the breadfruit. The published 

 accounts of these three trips met with great popular demand, nda 

 principally through his glowing accounts, together with the praises 

 of the other Pacific navigators, a desire for the introduction of the 

 fruit into the West Indies was built up, a demand which it was 

 attempted to gratify in 1787, when Captain Wm. Bligh was dis- 

 patched to bring plants from Tahiti to the British West Indies. 



In 1769, however, the French authorities had sent out from the 

 Isle de France, the modern Mauritius, an expedition for the purpose 

 of obtaining valuable foods and fruits for the French Insular 

 colonies. This expedition, which carried Sonnerat, a naturalist, 

 visited New Guinea and the Philippines, and from the Island of 

 Luzon he shipped breadfruits which were taken back to the " Isle 

 de France." That these plants were of the seeded variety would 

 seem to be well indicated by the description which he gives of 

 them in his book as well as by the figure engraved in the same 

 work.* 



The presence of the seeded breadfruit in Mauritius might be 

 (luestioned, however, owing to the fact that Baker and other modern 

 botanical writers do rot mention it. That it was carried there by 

 this expedition is hardly to be doubted, and its presence in 1789 

 at least is assured by an entry in a manuscript catalogue of the 

 Royal Gardens at Port Louis, referred to in Lamarck's " Ency- 



• Sonnerat, "Voyage a la Nouvelle Guinee," p. 100. Paris, 1776. 



