216 Fruits of Cuba. - 
is something very captivating in the mere idea of a tree 
which bears loaves of bread on its branches. It seized 
the imagination of Lord Byron, who thus poetically, 
though extravagantly, describes it : 
* The bread-tree, whioh, without the ploughshare, yields 
The unreaped harvest of ien elds, 
And bakes its unadulterated loaves x 
Without a furnace in PEON d groves, 
off famine from its fertile breast, 
a. priceless market for the gathering guest.” 
The genus Artocarpus bestows its name on the natural 
order Artocarpee, which is nearly allied to the Urticee, 
or nettle tribe, and likewise to the Mulberries and Figs. 
Carica papaya. The Papaya, or Papaw. This | 
is but an ordinary fruit for eating, but it grows in a pic- 
turesque manner, and belongs to a a plant which in several 
' respects is quite remarkable. 
The tree has a straight, slender trunk, marked with 
parallel rings or scores, like many’ of the palms, and 
rises to the height of about twenty feet. At the top, is 
a broad tuft of palmated leaves, resembling those of the 
Palma Christi, or castor bean, very large, and held by 
long stiff footstalks, which branch out horizontally, like 
the sticks of an umbrella. Immediately under this 
canopy, just where the footstalks diverge from the tree, 
the fruit, of the shape and size of cantelopes, are clus- 
tered regularly and closely round the trunk, to the num- 
ber of twenty or thirty, and packed together like a 
bunch of grapes. Grainger compares the cluster to a 
necklace. The tree grows very rapidly, and the t 
is spongy and hollow, so that in some of the islands it is 
