358 A MISSION TO VITI. 
base, sixteen feet in circumference. Milne (Hook. Jour. 
Bot. and Kew Misc. ix. p. 113) gives from eighteen to 
twenty-seven feet circumference as the maximum, but 
he does not state at what height above the base his 
measurement was taken. Some of the trees at Korovono 
were from 80 to 100 feet high, and up to a height of 
60 feet free from branches. The bark was whitish on 
the outer, red on the inner, surface, peeling off like that 
of Australian gum-trees. Old specimens did not have re- 
gular whorls of branches, as is the case with most Coni- 
fers. The wood of the Korovono tree was white, but 
there is said to be also a red-wooded kind, which may 
perhaps prove distinct from this plant. Dakua is used for 
masts, booms, and spars, for flooring houses, and for all 
those purposes for which deal is usually employed by us. 
Spars, from sixty to eighty feet long, and two to three 
feet thick, were seen at Taguru, Viti Levu. The Dakua 
is not gregarious, but found always isolated in forests of a 
mixed composition. Like other Kowrie-pines, the Fijian 
exudes a gum, or rather resin, called “Makadre.” Lumps 
weighing 50 lbs. have occasionally been found under old 
rotten stumps; and a good deal might be collected in 
districts whence these trees have disappeared, if the 
natives could be made acquainted with the peculiar way 
in which the New Zealanders sound the ground for their 
kowrie-gum. There has never been any foreign trade in 
this article, because the Europeans in Fiji, ignorant of 
its average market-value, rejected the offer of the natives 
to collect it. Captain Dunn, an American, is said to have 
taken away half a ton of it, but it has not transpired 
whether he was able to dispose of it to advantage. New 
