34 FUNAFUTI ATOLL. 



water to render it soft and pliable and to allow the fibres to 

 separate. The fibres are either permitted to retain their original 

 whiteness, or they are dyed yellow, red, or black. The yellow 

 colour is imparted with turmeric, the black with mud and the 

 leaves of the Favola (Terminalia catappa, Linn.), and the red 

 with the bark of the Kura (Morinda citrifolia, Linn.), and that 

 of the Tiri. The liku worn by the common women consists 

 always of one row of fibres, all of the same colour ; whilst those 

 worn by ladies of rank are often composed of two or three rows 

 or layers (flounces), every one of which exhibits a different 

 colour. In Captain Cook's time the Tahitians used to suck the 

 bark of this plant when the breadfruit season was unproductive, 

 and the New Caledonians ate it, as they probably still do."* 



" It is the Talwalphin of some of our Aborigines, who use the 

 fibre of the bark for fishing lines and nets."f " By the Central 

 Queensland natives the roots and tops are used as food."| 

 In Hawaii, Hillebrand says: "The light wood serves for out- 

 riggers of canoes, the bark furnishes a tough and pliable bast for 

 ropes, and a decoction of the flowers is a useful emollient in 

 bronchial and intestinal catarrhs. 



Near the village were several bushes of Fo tangata (Brous- 

 sonetia papyracca, Vent.), distinguished from the other Fo |j 

 (Hibiscus) as the Man's Fibre tree. These grew as shrubs eight 

 feet high, with slender withy branches and coarsely veined soft 

 leaves ; apparently they were limited to two or three acres. No 

 care was bestowed on them, and while on the island I considered 

 the plants to be quite wild. Numerous references to this species, 

 as widely cultivated throughout Polynesia, make me now suspect 

 that this tract had originally been planted. Of Fiji Seemann 

 writes : " The cultivation of the plant does not seem to extend 

 further westwards towards the New Hebrides, New Caledonia, 

 and the Loyalty Groups ; nor does it seem to be in vogue amongst 



the islands of the Indian Archipelago and in India 



Materials for the scanty clothing worn by the Fijians are readily 

 supplied by a variety of plants, foremost among which stands 

 the Malo or Paper Mulberry (Broussonetia papyracea, Vent.), a 

 middle sized tree, with rough trilobed leaves, cultivated all over 

 Fiji."H Hillebrand thought that B. papyracea was a native of 



* Seemann loc. cit., p. 18. 



f Maiden Useful Native Plants, 1889, p. 624. 



J Thozet quoted id. 



Hillebrand Flora of the Hawaiian Islands, 1888, p. 49. 



|| " Botanical classification has often no place in vernacular nomencla- 

 ture, and through some resemblance in habit or in utility plants are 

 often placed together that to a botanist lie far apart." Guppy Trans. 

 Viet. Inst., 1896. 



1 Seemann loc. cit., p. 246. 



