EuTLAND. — History of the Pacific. 17 



limited scale. The tubers yield an excellent starch, which, we 

 learn from Ellis,''' was always used on festive occasions, but 

 did not enter into the ordinary food of the inhabitants. This, 

 he considers, was due to the labour required in its preparation ; 

 but the difficulty of cooking, owing to the want of earthenware 

 or other vessels capable of withstanding fire, may have been 

 in part the cause. Starch obtained from the roots of a fern, 

 Pteris aqitilina, var. esculentwn, was largely used as food by 

 the New-Zealanders, who were probably acquainted with the 

 art of preparing starch when they entered the New Zealand 

 Archipelago. 



The very few cultivated esculents these people possessed 

 made the fern-root of great importance to them, and com- 

 pelled the labour required in the preparation of the starch. 

 Throughout the INlalay Islands sago starch is extensively 

 used ; in some of the groups it forms the chief food of the 

 inhabitants. It is obtained from various species of palms 

 belonging to the genera Metroxylon, Sag us, and Corypha, 

 none of which seem to be regularly cultivated, though in 

 many places the trees have individual owners.! On the 

 south-east extremity of New Guinea Dr. Gill informs us that 

 the light-skinned Papuans make use of starch as food,]: but he 

 does not state from what species of plant it is obtained. 

 Westward of the Fly Eiver Strachan found the sago-palm 

 growing in great abundance, but the inhabitants were 

 unacquainted with the art of preparing the starch, and 

 merely used the dried pith as food.§ On some of the 

 islands of the Solomon Group, where the sago-palm is also 

 very abundant, the natives in time of scarcity use large pieces 

 of the pith of the tree baked as food, but do not prepare 

 starch, while in other places they were well acquainted with 

 the process;!! but neither in this nor any other of the Poly- 

 nesian groups was the art of drying the starch into cakes, as 

 practised by the Malays, understood. 



Starch, or farina, was largely used as food by the ancient 

 civilised inhabitants of the American Continent, and is still 

 the principal food of large sections of the Brazilian popula- 

 tion. H This starch was principally obtained from the root of 

 the Manikot lUilissima, an indigenous plant having poisonous 

 properties. The true arrowroots belonging to the genus 



* "Polynesian Researches." W. Ellis. 



t "The Malay Archipelago." A. R. Wallace. 



\ " Life iu the Southern Islands." W. Wyatt Gill. 



§ " Explorations and Adventures in New Guinea." Captain J, 

 Strachan. 



I, " A Naturalist among the Head-hunters." Charles Morris Wood- 

 ford. 



H "Travels in Brazil." George Gardner. 

 2 



