Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 1 (Stockdale).djvu/308

284 There lay on the ground, a great number of the fruits of the cycas, which the savages had not touched. Their succulent husk, which diffused an odour, like that of the finest apple, contains fermentative particles sufficient to produce a good spirituous liquor. Those fruits abound there, and may be useful to navigators.

Among the large trees which grow on the island of Cocos, I observed, with surprize, a new species of arec, the trunk of which was above eighteen toises in height, and its thickness throughout, not more than three inches. It was difficult for us to conceive how a tree, so weak in appearance, could support itself to so great an elevation; but our astonishment ceased, when we attempted to cut one down. Its wood was so very hard, as to resist, for some time, the most forcible strokes of the axe. A great quantity of interlaced (amilacée) substance, under the form of pith, occupied its centre, a circumstance common to many other trees of the same genus. This pith taken out of the trunk, left a cylinder, the wood of which did not exceed four-tenths of an inch in thickness, and was of a fine black colour. The fruit of this new species of arec is red, scarcely larger than a common olive, and nearly of the same shape.

The caryota urcus was one of the large trees of those