Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/836

754 and the islands of the Pacific. It attains an elevation of about fifty feet, and grows wild in the forests. The leaves are large, glossy, and deeply pinnated, like the fronds of a fern, and the fruit resembles a muskmelon—the edible interior being of the



consistence of newly baked bread, and tasting like batter-pudding or boiled milk and potatoes. It is sometimes fried in slices, and served with meat as a side dish, or eaten with milk and sugar; but the usual mode of preparation is to bake the unripe quartered portions in rude ovens of heated stones, arranged in layers with earth and leaves, on the same principle as scalloped oysters. As there are many varieties, ripening at different seasons of the year, the supply is practically inexhaustible. Some kinds yield valuable timber, and from the inner bark of other species the natives manufacture clothing.

The "Jack-fruit"—a South Sea representative—is long and gourdlike, and weighs from twenty to sixty pounds. Although most of the crop is borne on the boughs, in the usual manner, some of the fruit grows directly on the bare trunk, a foot or two from the ground, presenting a very singular appearance. It