38 



PLATE X. 



LUGUNOK. 



VIEW OF A WOODY CORAL ISLAND, SEEN FROM WITHIN. 



February. 



The stately bread-fruit trees seen at a distance in the last plate are in the 

 present brought so near that it was impossible to include their tops. To man 

 they are the most conspicuous and important of the vegetable products of these 

 islets, and they only flourish where masses of vegetable mould are already accu- 

 mulated. In the foreground we see two of the numerous varieties of this 



fine tree alluded to in the foregoing chapter: on the right ^13 | 14^, one 



with slightly cut leaves; in the centre ^10 | 11 the other, the leaves of which 



are more deeply cut. According to information collected by Dr. Mertens (" Voy. 

 du Seniavine," vol. iii.) the former is termed " Mai " in Morilho and Fananu, the 

 latter " Oness" and said to be the type of the wild plant, unchanged by cultivation, 

 and the only one bearing fully developed seeds. As far as I know, there were 

 in the Lugunor group in February many ripe bread-fruits, all of them with seeds, 

 but the variety with deeply cut leaves was by no means common, and seemed 

 to be attended to and esteemed quite as much as the others. The fruit 

 with seeds was generally round, rather smaller than the round variety in Ualan, 

 and had a flavour resembling that of the latter, but less fine, and the fibres were 

 not so tough.* No less important than the fruit is the wood of the bread-fruit tree 

 to the inhabitants of the coral islands, of which not only canoes, but all kinds of 

 household articles, even cooking apparatus, are made; water being about here 

 brought to the boiling point by throwing heated stones into it. The plank-like 



* There are several varieties of bread-fruits in reconciles the above apparently contradictory state- 

 which the ovules become developed, which fully ments. — Berthold Seemann. 



