64 
POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
is still more picturesque, as a number of knots 
and contortions are formed on the buttresses and 
branches, which render the outlines more broken 
and fantastic. 
The wood of the rata has a fine straight grain, 
but being remarkably perishable, is seldom used, 
excepting for fire-wood. Occasionally, however, 
they cut off one of the buttresses, and thus obtain 
a good natural plank, with which they make the 
long paddles for their canoes, or axe-handles. 
The leaf is large and beautiful, six or eight inches 
in length, oblong in shape, of a dark green colour, 
and, though an evergreen, exceedingly light and 
delicate in its structure. The tree bears a small 
white racimated panicle flower, esteemed by the 
natives on account of its fragrance. The fruit, 
which hangs singly or in small clusters from the 
slender twigs, is flat, and somewhat kidney-shaped. 
The same term is used by the natives for this 
fruit, and the kidney of an animal. The nut is a 
single kernel, in a hard, tough, fibrous shell, 
covered with a thin, compact, fibrous husk. It is 
not eaten in a raw state; but, though rather hard 
when fully ripe, it is, when roasted in a green state, 
soft, and pleasant to the taste. 
In addition to these, the ti- root, dracance ter - 
minalis, resembling exactly that found in the 
Sandwich Islands, is baked and eaten; and the to, 
or sugar-cane, saccharum officinarum , which grows 
spontaneously, and perhaps in greater perfection 
than in any other part of the world, was formerly 
cultivated, and eaten raw. On a journey, the 
natives often carry a piece of sugar-cane, which 
furnishes a sweet and nourishing juice, appeasing 
at once, to a certain degree, both thirst and 
hunger. Within a few years they have been 
