POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
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frequently twelve or sixteen feet long, eighteen inches or 
two feet wide, of a beautiful pea-green colour when 
fresh, and a rich bright yellow when dry. The fruit is 
about nine inches long, and in shape somewhat like a 
cucumber, excepting that the angles are frequently well 
defined, which gives to the fruit the appearance of a 
triangular or quadrangular prism when ripe, of a bright 
delicate yellow colour. Sixty or seventy single fruit 
are occasionally attached to one stalk. Each plantain 
stem, or tree, produces only one bunch of fruit, and 
when the fruit is ripe, it is cut down, and its place 
supplied by the suckers that rise around the root 
whence it originally sprung. If the suckers, or oifsets, 
be four or five feet high when the parent stem is cut 
down, they will bear in about twelve months. 
The fruit is not often allowed to ripen on the trees, 
but it is generally cut down as soon as it has reached its 
full size, and while yet green; the bunch is then hung 
up in the native houses to ripen, and eaten as each turns 
yellow. When they wdsh to accelerate their ripeness for 
a public entertainment, they cut them down green, wrap 
them in leaves, and bury them thirty-six or forty-eight 
hours in the earth, and on taking them out they are 
quite soft, and apparently ripe, but much more insipid 
than those which had gradually ripened on the tree, or 
even in the house. The kinds growing in the mountains 
are large, and, though rich and agreeable when baked, 
are most unpalatable when raw; they have a red skin, 
and a bright yellow pulp. Their native name is fei: 
their habits of growth are singular; for, Avhile the fruit 
of all the other varieties hangs pendent from the stem, 
this rises erect from a short thick stalk in the centre of 
the crown or tuft of leaves at the top. In several of 
