ARTOCARPUS. 
polite arts, i. e. painting, sculpture, and archi- 
tecture, to which may be added engraving. It 
appears that all civilized nations in every age 
have produced artists, and that with a degree 
of excellence, generally answerable to their 
civilization and opulence. In every nation 
where the arts have flourished, the artists 
have made but rude essays, and by degrees 
they have been nurtured up to excellence, 
except in such instances where they have 
been transplanted, as from Greece to Rome. 
It is universally acknowledged respecting 
statuary and architecture, that ancient 
Greece has produced the best artists in the 
world ; their works, which have escaped 
the ravages of time, are the standing monu- 
ments of their fame, and are still considered 
as the models of perfection ; there is, how- 
ever, an uncertainty whether their painters 
were equally skilled with their statuaries. 
With some reason, many judicious persons 
have supposed they were not ; while others 
contend, that so much excellence produced 
in one branch must have contemporary ar- 
tists, who would excel in the other also. 
While we cannot doubt of the genius of the 
Grecian artists, and of their ability to pro- 
duce w'orks of excellence, yet it may not be 
allowed, that this argument wall be found to 
be so conclusive as it may at first appear, 
since Chinese and Indian models are found 
in a more perfect state than either their 
drawings or paintings. When the Goths 
overran Italy, the arts were destroyed; 
and, with Grecian architecture, painting 
and sculpture lay in one common grave for- 
gotten, until they revived under some ar- 
tists in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, 
who ought not to be named as artists, but 
for the succeeding effects to which their ef- 
forts prepared the way, and in a short time af- 
ter produced Michael Angelo, Raphael, Cor- 
reggio, Titian, Algardi, Bernini, &c. painters, 
sculptors, and architects, to whose works the 
living artists are almost as much indebted as 
these illustrious characters were to the an- 
cient monuments they dug from the ruins 
of old Rome. See A rts, fine. 
ARTOCARPUS, in botany, bread-fruit 
tree. Class, Monoecia Monandria. Male 
flowers, cal. none; ament cylindrical, all 
covered with florets ; cor. to each two pe- 
tals, oblong, concave, blunt, villose. ; stam. 
filament single, within each corolla, filiform, 
the length of the corolla ; anther oblong. 
Female flowers, on the same tree : cal. and 
corolla none ; pist. germs very many ; con- 
nected into a globe, hexangular style to 
each, filiform; stigma single, or two, ca- 
pillary, revolute ; per. fruit ovate, globular, 
compound, muricate ; seed for each germ 
solitary, oblong, covered with a pulpy aril, 
placed on an ovate receptacle. There are 
but two species, 1. A. incisa, which is the 
thickness of a man, and upwards of 40 feet 
high ; the trunk is upright ; the wood soft, 
smooth, and yellowish; the inner bark 
white, composed of a net of stiffish fibres, 
the outer bark smooth, but full of chinks, 
pale ash-colour, with small tubercles thinly 
scattered over it. Wherever the tree is 
wounded, it pours out a glutinous milky li- 
quor. The branches form an ample almost 
globular head ; the lower ones, which are 
the longest, spring from the trunk 10 or 
12 feet above the ground, spreading almost 
horizontally, scattered, and in a sort of 
whorl ; twigs ascending, bearing flowers 
and fruit at their ends. In captain Cook’s 
voyage it is observed, that the bread-fruit 
tree is about the size of a middling oak ; its 
leaves are frequently a foot and a half long, 
oblong, deeply sinuated, like those of the 
fig-tree, which they resemble in consistence 
and colour, and in exuding a milky juice 
when broken. The fruit is the size and 
shape of a child’s head, and the surface is 
reticulated 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 
core ; it is as white as snow, and of the con- 
sistence of new bread. It must be roasted 
before it is eaten, being first divided into 
three or four parts ; its taste is insipid, with 
a slight sweetness, somewhat resembling 
that of the crumb of wheaten bread mixed 
with the Jerusalem artichoke. The fruit 
not being in season all the year, there is a 
method of supplying this defect, by re- 
ducing it to sour paste called makie ; and 
besides this, cocoa-nuts, bananas, plantains, 
and a great variety of other fruits, come in 
aid of it. This tree not only supplies food, 
but also clothing, for the bark is stripped 
off the suckers, and formed into a kind of 
cloth. To procure the fruit for food costs 
the Otaheiteans no trouble or labour but 
climbing a tree ; which though it should not 
indeed shoot up spontaneously, yet, as Cap- 
tain Cook observes, if a man plant ten trees 
in his life time, he will as completely fulfil 
his duty to his own and future generations, 
as the native of our less temperate climate 
can do by ploughing in the cold winter, and 
reaping in the summer’s heat, as often as 
these seasons return ; even if after he has pro - 
cured bread for his present household, he 
should convert a surplus into money, and 
lay it up for his children. But where the 
