PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 290 



the equator, from Sumatra to the Marquesas Isles, when 

 first Europeans began to visit them. Its fruit is con- 

 stituted, like the pine-apple, of an assemblage of ,bracts 

 and fruits welded into a fleshy mass, more or less 

 spherical; and as in the pine-apple, the seeds come to 

 nothing in the most productive cultivated varieties.^ 



Sonnerat ^ carried the bread-fruit tree to Mauritius, 

 where the Intendant Poivre took care to spread it. 

 Captain Bligh was commissioned to introduce it into 

 the English West Indian Isles. The mutiny of his 

 crew prevented his succeeding the first time, but a 

 second attempt proved more fortunate. In January, 

 1793, he landed 153 plants at St. Vincent, whence the 

 species has been difiused' into several parts of tropical 

 America.* 



Rumphius* saw the species wild in several of the 

 Sunda Isles. Modern authors, less careful, or acquainted 

 only with cultivated species, say nothing on this head. 

 Seemann ^ says for the Fiji Isles, " cultivated, and to all 

 appearance wild in some places." On the continent of 

 Asia it is not even cultivated, as the climate is not hot 

 enough. 



The bread-fruit is evidently a native of Java, Am- 

 boyna, and the neighbouring islands ; but the antiquity 

 of its cultivation in the whole of the archipelago, proved 

 by the nnniber of varieties, and the facility of propa- 

 gating it by buds and suckers, prevent us from knowing 

 its history accurately. In the islands to the extreme 

 east, like Otahiti, certain fables and traditions point to 

 an introduction which is not very ancient, and the 

 absence of seeds confirms this.^ 



Jack-Fruit — Artocarpus intcgrifolia, Linnseus. 



The jack-fruit, larger than the bread-fruit, for it 

 sometimes weighs as much as eighty pounds, hangs from 



' See the fine plates published in Tussao's More des Antilles, vol. ii. 

 pis. 2 and 3 ; and Hooker, Bot. Mag., t. 2869-2871. 



' Voyages a la Nouvelle Guinie, p. 100. ' Hooker, vhi supra, 



* Rumphius, Serb. Amhoin, i. p. 112, pi. 33. 

 ' Flora YitiensU, p. 255. 



• Seemann, Fl. Vit, p. 255 ; Nadeand, Envm. des PI. Indig. de Taiiti, 

 p. 44; Idem, PI. usuelles des Taitiens, p. 24. 



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