550 



THE TROPICAL WORLD. 



feed horses it is good to soak the grain twelve hours : they mash it easier with their 

 teeth, and it yields them more nourishment. The leaves stripped off the stalks after 

 the grain is ripe, tied up in bundles when dry, are excellent forage for horses, cows, 

 etc. The stalks, pressed like sugar-cane, yield a sweet juice, which, being fermented 

 and distilled, yields an excellent spirit; boiled without fermentation it affords an 

 excellent syrup. In Mexico fields are sown with it thickly, that multitudes of small 

 stalks may arise, which, being cut from time to time, like asparagus, are served in 

 desserts, their thin sweet juice being extracted in the mouth by chewing them. The 

 meal wetted is excellent food for young chickens and the old grain for grown fowls." 



In Europe, as well as in the United States, the quantity or maize grown far exceeds 

 that of wheat or any other grain ; but so little is the value of this noblest of cereals 

 known in Great Britain, that even during the famine in Ireland it ^as with the utmost 

 difficulty that the starving peasants could be induced to use the meal sent over to them 

 from America. This was doubtless in a great measure owing to their unacquaintance 

 with the proper manner of cooking it. A delegation of colored " mammies " from 

 Virginia, skilled in the mysteries of "pone" and "hoe-cake," would have been of 

 inestimable service. 



In light sandy soils, under the scorching rays of the sun, and in situations where 

 sufficient moisture cannot be obtained for the production of rice, numerous varieties of 

 Millet {Sorghum vulgare) are successfully cultivated in many tropical countries — in 

 India, Arabia, the West Indies, in Central Africa, and in Nubia, where it is grown 

 almost to the exclusion of every other esculent plant. Though the seeds are by much 

 the smallest of any of the cereal plants, the number borne upon each stalk is so great 

 as to counterbalance this disadvantage, and to render the cultivation of millet as pro- 

 ductive as that of any other grain. 



The Bread- fruit tree (Artocarpus incisa) is the great gift of Providence to the 

 fairest isles of Polynesia. No fruit or forest tree in the north of Europe, with the 

 exception of the oak or linden, is its equal in regularity of growth and comeliness of 

 shape ; it far surpasses the wild chestnut, which somewhat resembles it in appearance. 

 Its large oblong leaves, frequently a foot and a half long, are (Jeeply lobed like those 

 of the fig tree, which they resemble not only in color and consistence, but also in 

 exuding a milky juice when broken. About the time when the sun, advancing 

 towards the Tropic of Capricorn, announces to the Tahitians that summer is approach- 

 ing, it begins to produce new leaves and young fruits, which commence ripening in 

 October, and may be plucked about eight months long in luxuriant succession. The 

 fruit is about the size and shape of a new born infant's head; and the surface is reticu- 

 lated, not much unlike a truffle; it is covered with a thin skin, and has a core about 

 as big as the handle of a small knife. The eatable part lies between the skin and the 

 core ; it is as white as snow, and somewhat of the consistence of new bread ; it must 

 be roasted before it is eaten, being first divided into three or four parts; i^ts taste, 

 according to some, is insipid, with a slight sweetness, somewhat resembling that of the 

 crumb of wheaten bread mixed with boiled and mealy potatoes. But Wallace, who 

 met with it in the island of Amboyna, speaks of it in very different terras. He says : 

 " Here I enjoyed a luxury I have never met with either before or since — the true 

 bread-fru,it. It is baked entire in the hot embers, and the inside scooped out with a 

 spoon. I cqrapared it to Yorkshire pudding j others tl^ought it was like mashed 



