-[ 24 Art. VII — A. Matsumura : 



constitute important articles of food, together with fish, shell-fish 

 and birds. It may be that doves are plentiful in Palau, for 

 Captain Wilson tells us that he was frequently entertained with 

 dishes prepared from tliese Ijirds. 



In Yap, we find a plant which is called voi {Inocarpus edulis) 

 by the natives. It grows to a ])ig tree with hard wood fit for 

 building boats. It bears edible fruit of the shape of kidney. On 

 one occasion I happened to see native women cooking this fruit, 

 I took a- piece and ate it, it liad a slight taste but was by no 

 means delicious. Though the fruit of the vol may not form the 

 principal food of the natives, it furnishes good material to the na- 

 tive fare. I'he voi is found not only in Yap, but in other islands 

 where it is called by different names. It grows, for instance, in 

 Ponapé and the Mariana group, which are among the islands now 

 under Japanese occupation. The plant is also found in the Philip- 

 pine Archipelago as well as in islands south of the equator, such 

 as Tonga, Samoa and Tahiti. Daring our voyage among the South 

 Sea Islands, we saw the vol in luxuriant growth at Suva in the 

 Fiji Islands. Here the plant is called the ivy, and its fruit the 

 Fijian chestnut, which is eaten by the natives. 



In the West Caroline Islands, especially in Palau, it is not 

 difficult to obtain drinking water, for springs are found in the 

 islands. The natives, however, use rain water also. The method 

 of catching rain water is simple, yet ingenious. They fix a piece 

 of tin plate or something like it to the trunk, say, of a betel-nut 

 tree, in a slanting manner, so that the water flowing down the 

 tree may be conducted into a receptacle placed under it. In this 

 way they get comparatively pure rain water. In Mikura-jima, one 

 of the seven islands of Izu, rain water is caught in a similar 

 manner. Among the islanders of Palau, a bamboo tube some five 



