Passaic City record., 1893-09-02
BREAD FRUIT TREES.
A Wonderful Product Of tie Dutch
East Indies.
Tt Provides Food, Clothes, Shell
ter and Luxuries.

oOutu DeiiS, grows IOTIy TO uIJy lett
high, the fruit being round or slightly
oval in shape, first green, then brown,
and turning yellow when fully ripe.
1t is from five to eight inches in diam
eter, and tastes insipid when cooked.
| could not determine what the taste
was like, unless it were grocery store
brown paper. In Samoa and Tahiti
the tree yields succession of two or
three crops during eight months in
the year. Its fruitfulness is said to
exceed even the generous plantain,
uFon which the natives of the tropics
subsist almost solely where the bread
fruit is not grown. It dispenses en-
tirely with the labor of the agricultur
ist, the miller, the baker there need
be no care for seed time or harvest;
there is no thrashing, no grinding, no
kneading; in fact, the islanders of the
South Seas have their bread ready
prepared, and have only to place it on
the Goals as they need it, says Ober.
This placing on the Goals is Sictur-
esque affair, like a Rhode Island clam
bake. The fruit is cut, the core re-
moved, and, hot stones having been
placed in hollow in the earth and
covered with leaves, the fruit is laid on
top, and again covered with leaves
and hot stones, on which more bread
fruit is laid, then another layer of
leaves and stones, and on top of all
earth is heaped to depth of six inches
or more. The hot-stone bake lasts
about thirty minutes, and the result is
a brown piece of natural bread, white
or perhaps yellow, inside, and very
nutritious. Some think it more like
the plantain than wheat bread. It is
almost tasteless when cooked green,
but is highly appreciated by experts
when allowed to ripen just little;
not to allow the yellow state, however,
when it has decayed flavor. / found
it impossible to like it very much in
any state, but it seems to be an acquired
taste with some whom I have heard
praise it. This is the seed-bearing
bread fruit which grows throughout
Polynesia, but the true bread of the
Moluccas, propagated only by cuttings
the seeds being entirely aborted by
cultiyatien-is different plant.
If Polynesian plants 20 ordinary
bread fruit trees he is Independent for
life, unless his enemies destroy them.
The constant feuds of various tribes in
the same group and on the same island,
tend to famine, as they wantonly de-
stroy each others cocoanut palms,
banana groves and bread fruit trees.
The fiber of the inner bark of the
bread fruit makes good cloth, but
coarser than the "tapa, made from
the paper mulberry tree. The wood is
soft and light, of rich yellow, turn
ing to mahogany in use, just about
right for the dug-out canoe. Then the
milky juice obtained by puncturing the
bole is used as gnm. Another use is
to spread it about as bird lime, to
catch the feathered songsters of the
woods. A preparation is also madefor
tattooing. Usually the Polynesian's
house is bamboo leaves and grass; but
sometimes bread fruit uprights and
beams are used. In fact this beautiful
and useful tree. is one of the choicest
gifts of nature to the brown man of
the tropic seas. tits deeply lobed, dark
green, glossy leaves, twelve to eigh-
teen inches long, and its useful, if not
luscious fruit, afford him shade and
food, and if he does not like baked
bread, he puts quantities of it in
hole in the ground, often twenty feet
in diameter, changing it from sweet
to sour, in which state it will keep for
months. Some of these silos hold
couple of TONS
The indigenous trees of the West In
dies and South America, which are al
lied to the bread fruit, are the bread
nut of Jamaica, and the milk or COW
tree of Demerara. st. Vincent was
the first island of the West Indies
where the bread fruit was first planted,
and there it has fourished to greater
extent than in any other of the
Caribbean chain, even invading the
forest edges to find companion in
the trumpet tree, which looks like it.
It grows on plantations, in groves, and
in deeper valleys in a wild state Am
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