643 



where they arrived the same year (Bot. Mag. l.c) ; 530 plants 

 for St. Vincent and 700 for Jamaica and Kew are quoted in 

 Kew Bull. 1892, p. 95 and some particulars of the condition' of 

 the Jamaica plants are given in Kew Bull. 1903, p. 11 — letter 

 Mr, Henry Shirley to Sir Joseph Banks dated, Kingston, Jamaica, 

 Dec. 20th, 1794. The St. Vincent plants were reported to have 

 begun to bear in the following vear (1794) (l.c.l and in' Jamaica 



Jamaica 



from 



mittee 



of Correspondence dated London, March 31st, 1795, is 

 reprinted. In this letter Fuller mentioned that "as we owe 

 the blessing of this introduction entirely to the King, I am sure 

 you will think as I do that he has a peculiar right to the primities, 

 the fruits first.produced from those trees '' and suggested sending 

 " ten or twelve in number of the fruit, in a large jar, covered 

 with strong rum, well corked, bound with leather and pitch and 

 resin melted upon the cork.'' He further said ''His Majesty 

 knows me and has been pleased to express great satisfaction at 

 the method I took two or three years ago to enrich his garden 

 at Kew with a great number of Jamaica plants more than had 

 been introduced there in twenty years before ; I will consult 

 Sir Joseph Banks upon it and we will endeavour to make it an 

 agreeable present equally honourable to the maker and the 

 receiver/' 



- This fruit although not of such great importance to the 

 Colonies as at first anticipated is nevertheless very valuable 

 and forms an important article of food in most of the coimtries 

 into which it has been introduced. In the South Sea Islands it is 

 indispensable. It is about the size of and similar in appearance 

 to a green melon, or as Dampier ("Voyage of Adventure," i. 

 1769) puts it " as big as a penny loaf when wheat is at five 

 shilhngs the bushel " ; he adds that " the natives of Guam use 

 it as bread, gathering it when fully grown while it is green and 

 hard and then baking it in an oven." It is usually regarded 

 more as a vegetable and requires to be cooked before eating. 

 The '' bread-nuts " are boiled and eaten with salt and used 

 by cooks for stuffing (Kew Bull. 1888, p. 210— Dominica). The 

 fruit is cut into sfices and baked in " Jinguba '' oil — from the 

 seed of AracMs hypogaea {see p. 201) in Angola (Hiern, Cat. 

 Welw. Afr, PL i. p, 1022), shced and sun-dried in Jamaica (Mus. 

 Kew). Bread-fruit flour is described as an insipid non-saccharine 

 substance which forms with fish and bananas the staple food of 

 the Tahitians (Year Book, Pharm. 1903, p. 328). Powder prepared 

 from the fruit in the Seychelles has been found to consist of 

 practically pure starch — as much as 99-4 per cent. (Col. Eep. 

 Misc. No. 71, 1910, p. 226). Boiled and pulped and mixed with 

 phosphorus, the bread-fruit is recommended as a substitute for 

 corn meal in a phosphorus preparation (a stick of phosphorus 

 to 8 gallons of meal, mixed while hot) used for poisoning crabs 

 often serious pests in gardens near the sea and in swampv 



