wheat is at five shillings the bushel; it is of a round shape, and hath a thick tough rind. When the fruit is 
ripe, it is yellow and soft, and the taste is sweet and pleasant. The natives of Guam use it for bread. 
They gather it when full grown, while it is green and hard; then they bake it in an oven which scorcheth 
the rind, and maketh it black; but they scrape off the outside black crust, and there remains a tender thin 
crust; and the inside is soft, tender, and white, like the crumb of a penny loaf. There is neither seed nor 
stone in the inside, but all of a pure substance, like bread. It must be eaten new, for, if it be kept above 
twenty-four hours, it grows harsh and choky, but it is very pleasant before it is too stale. This fruit lasts 
in season eight months in the year, during which the natives eat no other sort of bread kind. I did never 
see of this fruit anywhere but here. The natives told us, that there is plenty of this fruit growing on the 
rest of the Ladrone Islands; and I did never hear of it anywhere else/’ 
The scientific men who accompanied Captain Cook in his voyages, came home with the most en- 
thusiastic ideas of the bread-fruit. Dr. Solander calls it “the most useful vegetable in the world,” and 
urges that no expense should be spared in its cultivation. The mere idea of bread, the most valuable food 
of man, growing spontaneously, was doubtless calculated to excite attention — almost, perhaps, as strongly 
as the subsequent description of the poet: — 
“ The bread-tree, which, without the ploughshare, yields 
The unreap’d harvest of unfurrow’d fields, 
And bakes its unadulterated loaves 
Without a furnace, in unpurchased groves, 
And flings off famine from its fertile breast, 
A priceless market for the gathering guest.” 
The milk-like sap of these trees, affords a viscid substance resembling bird-lime or caoutchouc, which 
is used as a cement, and for stopping cracks in vessels designed for holding water. The broad leaves are 
employed to wrap up the fruit in, and also as plates, dishes, and napkins for the guests to wipe their hands 
on. The inner bark is beaten out into cloth, such as is common in the South Sea Islands, and more is 
made from this tree than from the paper mulberry. The timber which is light, is used for building boats 
and houses, and the stamineous catkins form a substitute for tinder. 
“Towards the end of the month,” says William Howitt in his account of August, “symptoms of the 
year’s decline press upon our attention. The morning and evening air has an autumnal freshness; the 
hedge-fruit has acquired a tinge of ruddiness; the berries of the mountain-ash have assumed their beautiful 
orangy hue; and swallows twitter as they fly, or sit perched in a row upon a rail or the dead bough of 
a tree. The swift has taken its departure. That beautiful phenomenon, the white fog, is again beheld 
rolling its snowy billows along the valleys; the dark tops of trees emerging from it as from a flood.” 
As we gaze on the beauties of the lower world we may well say with the poet: — 
“ Oh good beyond compare! 
If thus thy meaner works are fair, 
If thus thy bounties gild the span 
Of ruined earth and sinful man : 
How glorious must that mansion be 
Where thy redeemed shall dwell with thee !” 
