150 REMARKS AND OPINIONS. 



to this place. A sea-swallow, Sterna stoliday builds 

 in countless flocks in the high airy summits.* 



The most useful plant of this island-chain is the 

 common pandanus of the South Sea islands (JFob). 

 It grows wild on the sterile sand, where vegetation 

 commences, and fertilizes the ground by the many 

 leaves which fall from it. It luxuriates in the 

 moist, low ground of the more fruitful islands. It 

 is also diligently cultivated ; numerous varieties, 

 with improved fruits, which are to be ascribed to 

 cultivation, are propagated by layers. Their seed 

 produces the original species (the Eriian),\ The 

 fruit of the pandanus constitutes, in Radack, the 



* At Erigup we saw the same birds in equally large flocks, 

 hovering over one of the islands, which is otherwise not dis- 

 tinguished from the rest. 



f There are above twenty varieties, which are distinguished 

 by the exterior form of the fruit, or compound stone-fruit which 

 they compose, and by the number of simple fruits or kernels 

 which they contain. The masculine tree is called Digar ; the 

 wild growing feminine Eruati : varieties are, Bitger^ Bugicn, 

 Eilugk, Undaim, Erugk, Lerro, Adiburik, Eidebotoyi, Eroma- 

 mugk, Tabenebogk, Rabilebil, TtnunUsieti, Lugidugubilan, 

 Ulidien, Sfc. (The fruit, which we received in 1816, from 

 Udirick, was Lerro ; the pandanus on the RomanzofF Island, 

 Eruan.) That part of the fruit, from which the people of 

 Radack and Ralick draw their principal subsistence, is used in 

 the Sandwich, Marquesas, and Friendly Islands, for aromatic 

 shining yellow wreaths. We observe, by the way, that the 

 species Pandanus requires a farther and difficult investigation, 

 because the characters which most botanists have chosen to 

 distinguish the species, which they have enumerated, are in- 

 sufficient. Loureiro, Flor. Cochin, e>ipressly observes, that the 

 truit of the P. odoralis&imus it until to be eaten. 



