GENERAL ACCOUNT HEDLEY. 39 



bean of this plant is excellent eating, as indeed its botanical 

 affinities would suggest. Yet as a source of food it is entirely 

 neglected by a race whose diet is almost limited to the two 

 staples of fish and coconut. As I have elsewhere remarked,* " we 

 must remember that even among the most degraded races every- 

 thing eatable is not eaten. As famine presses heavier upon a 

 tribe so are coarser and less agreeable foods used." Dr. Guppy 

 also points out "the singular fact that the inhabitants of one 

 Pacific group are often unacquainted with, or make but little use 

 of, sources of vegetable food which in other groups afford a staple 

 diet."f I gathered from one source that the Sageta was used to 

 caulk the seams of canoes, but I do not know exactly how it was 

 applied. In general the natives described it to me as but a weed, 

 and the only use to which they put it is to crop the foliage for 

 green-soiling the gardens. 



A common herb everywhere was the Tulla tulla (Triumfetta 

 procumbens, Forst.), whose prostrate stems trailed for several 

 feet over the ground. In sunshine only did the golden yellow 

 petals unfold, but the burr-like seeds attracted attention in all 

 weathers. This was the most valued medicinal plant for the 

 native doctors, who made of its foliage both decoctions and 

 poultices. The native pharmacopeia included several other plants, 

 as the Talla talla gemoa (Psilotum triquetrum, Linn.) ; wounds 

 from the spine of the Monacanthus fishes were treated with a poul- 

 tice of this, and another mode of treatment was to pile the plant 

 on a fire and hold the wounded limb in the smoke then produced. 

 For ear ache a remedy was sought in the cruciferous herb Lou 

 (Cardamine sarmentosa, Forst.), the leaves of which being chewed 

 the juice is strained in a cloth and poured into the ear. " In New 

 Caledonia this species is eaten instead of Cress and as an anti- 

 scorbutic."! A cure for boils is a poultice of the leaves of the 

 Lakoumonong, kindly identified for me by Mr. R. T. Baker, 

 as Wedelia slriyulosa, D.C., a tall composite herb with yellow 

 flowers, which grew among the Brousonnetia bushes and reached 

 a height of about six feet. It was further used as a scent plant. 

 The leaves are chopped fine, wrapped in a cloth and strained 

 by twisting, cloth and leaves are then soaked in coconut oil 

 to impart to it a perfume. 



Another scent was given to the anointing oil by crushing in 

 it the fronds of Meili (Polypodium, sp.), a common fern there. 

 Several other species of ferns nourished in shady places in the 

 centre of the island, the most conspicuous of which were the 

 large tufts of Asplenium nidus, Linn. 



* In J. P. Thomson British New Guinea, 1892, p. 283. 

 t Guppy loc. cit., p. 90. 

 Seemann loc. cit., p. 5. 



