3o8 



not avail ourselves of all it offers. In India no curry is complete 

 without it: in Honduras fish is boiled in the "milk" to its great 

 improvement, but these are only suggestions of some of the 500 

 uses of this most useful of nuts. It is true that sonie of the nuts 

 from the southern islands have been planted but these are not yet 

 visible in the market. 



Cocos WeddeUana or WedcUii. A palm cultivated in some gar- 

 dens that bears an edible fruit of good flavor. I cannot identify 

 it having seen only the fruits. 



Phoenix dactylifcra, the Date. Although this palm grows well 

 and fruits abundantly (a young date palm in the Kamehameha 

 School grounds this year bore twenty bunches weighing from 

 twenty to twenty-five pounds each, when not yet fully grown, or 

 more than 450 pounds to the tree,) the fruit is genrally worthless, 

 at least compared with the excellent dried dates I have eaten in 

 Egy^pt, and which with parched corn made a good day's ration 

 for a traveler. 



Areca catechu, the Betel Palm, grows well here and bears 

 abundantly ; not being a chewer of betel. I cannot speak of the 

 quality of the fruit for mastication. 



Pandanus odorafissiiuns^ the native Lauhala. This and other 

 species afford important food to many Pacific islanders, but can 

 hardly be called good fruit. 



Monstera dcUciosa, the last in mv list, is by no means the least. 

 To my own taste it far surpasses the pineapple, but is an awkward 

 fruit to eat as it ripens by degrees taking several days. Belong- 

 ing to the Kalo family, it is a curious exception to the usually 

 hot or acrid fruits of the arums, but cultivation is doubtless the 

 explanation of its large highly flavored fruit. In Central America 

 it grows luxuriantly, but the scarce fruit is not attractive. With 

 me the more luxuriantly the vine grows the more abundant and 

 better the fruit, which takes more than a year to ripen. 



Upon the conclusion of the paper an open discussion took place 

 upon the cultivation of tropical fruits in Hawaii generally. Mr. 

 W. W. Hall, after comfplimenting Dr. Brigham upon the interest 

 and utility of the data which he had compiled, referred to the ex- 

 cellency and quantity of the Hawaiian grown oranges which 

 were obtainable in Honolulu forty years ago. These he described 

 as being exceedingly juicy and of a flavor which irrtported oranges 



