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group. They are hi general cone-shaped, flattened at 

 the base, or speriod. The quality of some of them is 

 excellent, dry and mealy like a potato ; that of others 

 is watery and insipid. They are either baked or 

 boiled, and eaten alone, or with pork or fish. Some- 

 times they are made into puddings, or buried under 

 ground, and made into a mandrm, i.e., native bread. 

 At all periods of the year there are some of the 

 varieties in fruit, but the fruit is most abundant from 

 the middle of February to the middle of April. In 

 some of the native towns the trees are abundant, 

 and groups of 20, or more, may frequently be seen 

 scattered over land which had been cultivated. Large 

 numbers of the trees were destroyed in the wars that 

 constantly occurred between different tribes, — the first 

 acts of an invading force being to destroy the food 

 plants and fruit-bearing trees of the tribe invaded. 



One or more of the varieties of the bread-fruit 

 bear seeds, but the most of them are barren. It is 

 doubtful whether these seed-bearing trees are varieties 

 of the artocarpus incisa, or if they do not form another 

 species of the same genus. The wood of the bread- 

 fruit is used for some purposes by the Eijians, but it 

 is not so good as that of the " Jack " (artocarpus in- 

 tegrifolia) or the artocarpus hirsuta. It is soft, light 

 brown, with parallel veins of a reddish colour. When 

 wounded, the tree yields a large quantity of white 

 sticky juice, which is used for caulking the seams of 

 canoes. The tree is propagated by suckers attached 

 to a portion of the root from which the sucker has 

 sprung. The young trees grow rapidly, and in the 

 third or fourth year after planting they reach a height 

 of about 16 feet, and begin to bear fruit. They have a 

 picturesque appearance peculiar to themselves of which 



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