5 
BREAD-FRUIT AND COCOA-PALM. 239 
the greatest number of, and most valuable, discov- 
eries. Governor Dundas was an enthusiast, and ex- 
hibited to me many pictures, taken by himself, of the 
scenery of St. Vincent and Barbados. 
Of the many trees which were introduced into the 
West Indies none have proved so great a boon to 
the laboring classes, and bane to the planter, as the 
bread-fruit. It was at once a success, and from this 
garden of acclimatization many hundred plants were 
distributed over the island. The tree would attract 
attention from the arrangement of ‘its deeply-lobed 
leaves; but the great balls of fruit, varying from five 
to eight inches in diameter, make it a conspicuous 
object even amongst tropical vegetation. Inside the 
shell, which when baked is hard, though thin, is a 
thick flesh like that of a melon. Though I cannot 
recall any substance that tastes exactly like it, it is 
certainly very good, and so nutritious that the natives 
of the islands in which it was discovered subsist upon 
it almost solely the year through. It is their “ daily 
bread,” indeed, and takes the place of the manufac- 
tured article entirely. It more than fills that place, 
for those who are dependent upon its bountiful har- 
vests need scarcely any animal food. The people in 
the favored country of its growth do not need to labor; 
a score of trees planted by each man will furnish a 
supply of food for a lifetime, and he need concern 
himself about nothing else than sleeping and eating. 
In its fruitfulness it exceeds even the generous plan- 
tain, upon which the natives of the tropics subsist 
almost solely where the bread-fruit is not grown. It 
dispenses entirely with the labor of the agriculturist, 
the miller, the baker; there need be no care for seed- 
