288 A MISSION TO VITI. 



Borassus ? jEthiopicum, Mart. It is to be regretted that 

 so few plantations of cocoa-nut trees are formed by 

 white settlers. The annual value of a fruit-producing 

 tree is never less than one dollar ; and how easily might 

 10,000 nuts be set in the ground, and the value of an 

 estate be permanently raised. Every part of the smaller 

 islands and the sea-borders of the larger are suitable lo- 

 calities. Only Bau, Viwa, and the districts adjacent, 

 form an exception: the trees, as soon as they have* 

 reached a certain height, become diseased ; their leaves 

 look as if dipped in boiling water, and their fruits are 

 few in number, poor, and often drop off before they 

 arrive at maturity ; a thick layer of marl, forming the 

 subsoil of those districts, seeming to oppose that ready 

 drainage the cocoa-nut tree requires, and which it enjoys 

 in so eminent a degree on the white beaches of sand and 

 decomposed corals. 



Starch is produced by four indigenous plants, viz. Roro 

 (Cycas circinaliS) Linn.), Yabia dina (Tacca pinnatifida, 

 Forst.), Yabia sa (Tacca sativa, Humph.), and Niu soria 

 or Sogo (Sagus Vitiensis, Wendl.), to which of late years 

 has been added the Cassava root of Western America 

 (Manihot Aipi, Pohl), commonly termed by the Fijians 

 " Yabia ni papalagi," i. e. foreign arrowroot. The Roro 

 (Cycas circinalis. Linn.), a tree thirty feet high, is by 

 no means a common plant in the islands, having been 

 encountered only at Viti Levu and Ovalau in isolated 

 specimens ; and as the pith-like substance contained in 

 the trunk was reserved for the sole use of the chiefs, 

 and forbidden to the lower classes, no inducement ex- 

 isted on the part of those debarred from it to extend it 



