BREAD-FRUIT TREE.

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ence, are numerous, varied, and valuable among these, the first that demands notice is the breadfruit tree, artocarpus, being in greater abundance, and in more general use, than other. The tree is large and umbrageous; the bark is light-coloured and rough; the trunk is sometimes two or three feet in diameter, and rises from twelve to twenty feet without a branch. The outline of the tree is remarkably beautiful, the leaves are broad, and indented somewhat like those of the fig-tree, frequently twelve or eighteen inches long, and rather thick, of a dark green colour, with a surface glossy as that of the richest evergreen.

The fruit is generally circular or oval, and is, on an average, six inches in diameter; it is covered with a roughish rind, which is marked with small square or lozenge-shaped divisions, having each a small elevation in the centre, and is at first of a light pea-green colour; subsequently it changes to brown, and when fully ripe assumes a rich yellow tinge. It is attached to the small branches of the tree by a short thick stalk, and hangs either singly, or in clusters of two or three together. The pulp is soft; in the centre there is a hard kind of core extending from the stalk to the crown, around which a few imperfect seeds are formed.

There is nothing very pleasing in the blossom; but a stately tree, clothed with dark shining leaves, and loaded with many hundreds of large light green or yellowish coloured fruit, is one of the most splendid and beautiful objects to be met with among the rich and diversified scenery of a Tahitian landscape. Two or three of these trees are often seen growing around a rustic cottage, and embowering it with their interwoven and prolific branches. The tree is propagated by shoots

from the root, it bears in about five years, and will probably continue bearing fifty or sixty.

The bread-fruit is never eaten raw, except by pigs; the natives, however, have several methods of dressing it. When travelling on a journey, they often roast it in the flame or embers of a wood-fire; and, peeling off the rind, eat the fruit: this mode of dressing is called tunu pa, crust or shell roasting. Sometimes, when thus dressed, it is immersed in a stream of water, and, when completely saturated, forms a soft, sweet, spongy pulp, or sort of paste; of which the natives are exceedingly fond.

The general and best way of dressing the breadfruit, is by baking it in an oven of heated stones. The rind is scraped off, each fruit is cut into three or four pieces, and the core carefully taken out; heated stones are then spread over the bottom of the cavity forming the oven, and covered with leaves, upon which the pieces of bread-fruit are placed; a layer of green leaves is strewn over the fruit, and other heated stones are laid on the top; the whole is then covered with earth and leaves, several inches in depth. In this state, the oven remains half an hour or longer, when the earth and leaves are removed, and the pieces of breadfruit taken out; the outsides are in general nicely browned, and the inner part presents a white or yellowish, cellular, pulpy substance, in appearance slightly resembling the crumb of a small wheaten loaf. Its colour, size, and structure are, however, the only resemblance it has to bread. It has but little taste, and that is frequently rather sweet; it is somewhat farinaceous, but not so much so as several other vegetables, and probably less so than the English potato, to which in flavour it is also inferior. It is slightly astringent, and, as a

QUALITIES OF BREAD-FRUIT.

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vegetable, it is good, but is a very indifferent substitute for English bread.

To the natives of the South Sea Islands it is the principal article of diet, and may indeed be called their staff of life. They are exceedingly fond of it, and it is evidently adapted to their constitutions, and highly nutritive, as a very perceptible improvement is often manifest in the appearance of many of the people, a few weeks after the bread-fruit season has commenced. For the chiefs, it is usually dressed two or three times a day; but the peasantry, &c. seldom prepare more than one oven during the same period; and frequently tihana, or bake it again, on the second day.

During the bread-fruit season, the inhabitants of a district sometimes join, to prepare a quantity of opio. This is generally baked in a prodigious oven. A pit, twenty or thirty feet in circumference, is dug out; the bottom is filled with stones, logs of firewood are piled upon them, and the whole is covered with large stones. The wood

is then kindled, and the heat is often so intense, as to reduce the stones to a state of liquefaction. When thoroughly heated, the stones are removed to the sides; many hundred ripe bread-fruit are then thrown in, just as they have been gathered from the trees, and are piled up in the centre of the pit; a few leaves are spread upon them, the remaining hot stones built up like an arch over the heap, and the whole is covered, a foot or eighteen inches thick, with leaves and earth. In this state it remains a day or two; a hole is then dug on one side, and the parties to whom it belongs take out what they want, till the whole is consumed. Breadfruit baked in this manner, will keep good several weeks after the oven is opened.