352 BtiTANY. 



It affects low and fertile soils, and as the bread-fruit is 

 the most useful and ornamental, so this is decidedly the 

 most noble and picturesque of Polynesian trees : a full- 

 grown and rather aged example, with its white sturdy 

 bole and spreading branches, clothed with a light-green 

 pinnated foliage, and loaded with a profusion of golden 

 fruit, presenting an admirable study for the pencil of 

 an artist. It is one of the very few Polynesian trees 

 that are deciduous, or shed their foliage at a season of 

 the year corresponding to our winter, which is a strange 

 anomaly; and one that is the more remarkable, as 

 many of the deciduous trees of Europe obtain a peren- 

 nial foliage at the expense of their fruit, when they are 

 removed to a tropical climate. The fruit of the vi is a 

 large yellow drupe, resembling the " egg-plum " of 

 England; it has a delicious sub-acid taste, which is 

 sometimes impaired, however, by a turpentine flavour ; 

 as is often the case also with the luscious mango-fruit of 

 India : indeed every part of the tree has, when broken, a 

 terebinthinous odour. At Tahiti, the vi matures its fruit 

 about the month of May, when the crop is so immense, 

 that, notwithstanding the large quantity consumed by 

 the natives and their numerous herds of swine, a pro- 

 fusion of fine fruit remains strewn upon the ground in 

 every grove. 



Oxalis repens. Society Isles. 

 O. corniculata. St. Helena. 



DODECANDRIA. MONOGYNIA. 



Portulaca lutea. Inhabits rocks on the sea- shore. 

 Marquesas ; native name pua-kea, (pua a flower, kea a 

 stone.) Christmas Island. 



llhizophora mangle. Timor. 



