3/4 
POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
these islands^ the fei is the principal support of the 
inhabitants. The plantain is a fruit that is always 
acceptable, and resembles in flavour a soft, sweet, but not 
juicy pear; it is very good in milk, and also in 
puddings and pies, and, when fermented, makes excellent 
vinegar. 
The vi, or Brazilian plum, a variety of spondias, 
{spondias dulcis of Parkinson,) is an abundant and ex¬ 
cellent fruit, of an oval or oblong shape, and bright 
yellow colour. In form and taste it somewhat resem¬ 
bles a magnum-bonum plum, but it is larger, and, instead 
of a stone, has a hard and spiked core, containing a 
number of seeds. The tree on which it grows is 
deciduous, and one of the largest found in the islands, 
the trunk being frequently four or five feet in diameter. 
The bark is gray and smooth, the leaf pinnate, of a light 
green colour; the fruit hangs in bunches, and is often so 
plentiful, that the ground underneath the trees is covered 
with ripe fruit, while the satisfied, and almost sur« 
feited pigs, lie sleeping round its roots. 
The aJiia, or jambo, eugenia Mallaccensis, is perhaps 
the most juicy of the indigenous fruits of the Society 
Islands. It resembles, in shape, a small oblong apple, 
is of a bright beautiful red colour, and has a white, juicy, 
but rather insipid pulp. Though grateful in a warm 
climate like Tahiti, its flavour is by no means so good as 
that of the ahia growing on the Sandwich Islands. Like 
the vi, it bears but one crop in the year, and does not 
continue in season longer than two or three months. 
Both these trees are propagated by seed. 
In certain seasons of the year, if the bread-fruit be 
scarce, the natives supply the deficiency thus occa¬ 
sioned with the fruit of the mape or rata, a native 
