288 A MISSION TO VITI. 
Borassus ? Aithiopicum, 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 (Zacca sativa, Rumph.), 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,” 7. 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 
