BREAD-FRUIT. Among the more valuable products of the warmer climates is to be ranked the bread-fruit, or Artocarpus. The best varieties of this esculent are found in the Ladrones Islands, and in many of the groups of islands scattered throughout the Southern Pacific Ocean; but are not confined exclusively to these regions.
The natives of the South Sea Islands distinguish eight different varieties. European observers do not seem in species, generally disposed to recognise these as essential distinctions, although they admit other species. The genus yielding this valuable fruit is Artocarpus; of which Sprengel admits five distinct species, integrifolia, Champeden, Philippensis, pulcherrima, and incisa.
The bread-fruit is a large tree, growing to the height of forty feet or more. It has a thick stem, and luxuriant foliage. The trunk is upright, the wood soft, smooth, and yellowish; and wherever the tree is wounded, a glutinous fluid exudes. The branches form an ample head, almost globular; the leaves are eighteen inches long and eleven broad, resembling those of the oak or the fig-tree, from their deep sinuities. The younger leaves, like all the more tender parts of the tree, are glutinous to the touch. The male flowers are among the upper leaves, and the female flowers at the ends of the twigs. The fruit is a very large berry, according to botanists, with a reticulated surface, resembling a cocoa-nut or melon in size and form, nine inches in length. It is filled with a white farinaceous fibrous pulp, which becomes juicy and yellow when the fruit is ripe; and the edible portion lies between the skin, which is green, and a core in the centre, which is about an inch in diameter.
During a considerable portion of the year the bread-fruit affords the chief sustenance of the Society Islanders, and is prepared after different fashions. It is slightly sweet, and has been compared to a cake made of flour, egg, sugar, and butter. In general it is cut in several pieces, and roasted or baked in a hole made in the ground, which is paved round with large smooth stones; it then resembles a boiled potato, but is not quite so farinaceous. The stones are previously heated by a fire kindled in the excavation, and the bread-fruit, wrapped in a banana leaf, is laid upon them, and covered with leaves and hot stones. When thus baked it is considered to equal or surpass any kind of bread. Sometimes water or cocoa-nut milk is added; sometimes it is boiled or formed into a paste. This last is accomplished by taking the fruit before it attains maturity, and laying it in heaps covered up with leaves, when it undergoes fermentation, and becomes disagreeably sweet. The core being then drawn out, the fruit or pulp is thrown into a paved excavation, and the whole covered up with leaves, wherein heavy stones are laid: it thus undergoes a second fermentation, and becomes sour, after which it will suffer no change for a long time. In the island of Nukahiwa, an agreeable beverage is obtained from it; and in the West Indies it is baked like biscuit. The fruit is in the greatest perfection about a week before beginning to ripen, which is easily recognised by the skin changing to a brownish cast, and by small granulations formed of the juice. In the West Indies it is soft and yellow when ripe, and is in taste and smell like a very ripe melon. Hogs, dogs, and poultry then feed on it readily.
There is another species of the bread-fruit tree that has been long known in India and the eastern islands, the fruit of which contains from forty to a hundred farinaceous seeds, in appearance resembling chestnuts. These when roasted or boiled are found to be very palatable. The external characters of the tree are scarcely to be distinguished from those of the other, and the chief distinction lies in the fruit, which attains nearly the size of the bread-fruit proper, and
Bread-fruit. is covered with long prickles. It grows rapidly from the seed, and attains larger dimensions than the proper bread-fruit tree.
Other uses. Besides its value as a fruit-tree, the bark of the bread-fruit furnishes the material for a species of cloth; the leaves are substituted for towels; and the wood is employed in the construction of boats and houses. A kind of cement and bird-lime is also prepared by boiling the juice exuding from the bark in cocoa-nut oil.
Its cultivation. The bread-fruit tree is of easy cultivation in its native soil. It flourishes with the greatest luxuriance on rising grounds; and is particularly abundant in the steep declivities of the Sandwich Islands, though it is very generally found throughout the Great Pacific Ocean. It grows in Amboyna, the Banda Islands, Timor, and the Ladrones; but it is more especially the object of care and cultivation in the Marquesas, and the Friendly and Society Islands.
Attempts to transplant it to the West Indies. The great utility of the bread-fruit as an article of food has, at different times, led to speculations on the possibility of naturalizing it in places where it is not of spontaneous growth. M. de Polve, the philosophic governor of the Mauritius, succeeded in introducing it there, and in the Isle of Bourbon, whether it was conveyed by M. de Souzerat, from Lyon, in the Philippine Islands. Being found in the greatest luxuriance under the same latitudes as the British West India Islands, and in a climate not dissimilar, the British government decided on the importance of transplanting it to these colonies. An expedition was therefore fitted out with particular care, under the command of Captain (then Lieutenant) Bligh, who sailed in the Bounty store-ship for the South Seas in December 1787. The Bounty arrived in safety at Otaheite, and took on board 1015 bread-fruit plants, besides a great variety of different species of other plants; and after remaining twenty-three weeks, set sail on the 4th of April 1789. This expedition, as is well known, was rendered totally abortive by the mutiny which ensued three weeks subsequently to its departure. On his arrival in England, Bligh was appointed to the command of two vessels specially fitted out as before for the same purpose. They sailed in August 1791, and anchored at Otaheite in February 1792. Here they remained above three months, and obtained even a greater store of plants than formerly. Bligh, in returning, made a dangerous voyage through Endeavour Straits, and anchored at Coypang in the island of Timor, where he substituted many other plants for those that had died. He then sailed for the West Indies, touching at St Helena, and reached the island of St Vincent in January 1793, where he committed 544 plants, of which 333 were bread-fruit, to the care of Dr Anderson, superintendent of the Botanic Garden, and substituted for them 467 of different species, designed for the Royal Garden at Kew. He next landed 623 plants, of which 347 were bread-fruit, at Port Royal in Jamaica, and replaced them with a further collection for the king, with which he arrived in England on the 2d of August 1793. Five years and eight months had thus been occupied in accomplishing the desirable purpose of these two expeditions.
The gold medal offered in 1777 by the Society for the Encouragement of Arts and Manufactures, to any one who should bring the bread-fruit plant from the South Sea Islands in a state of vegetation to the West Indies, was awarded, in 1793, to Captain Bligh. That society, with the laudable design of promoting its culture, continued to offer further premiums for the greatest number of plants raised in the British settlements. A silver medal was awarded to Dr Anderson, superintendent of the Botanic Garden at St Vincent in 1798; and, in 1802, the gold medal to the Honourable Joseph Robley, governor of Tobago. From the course adopted by these two cultivators, the history of the bread-fruit has received much elucidation.
Result of these attempts. Mr Robley received from Dr Anderson in June 1793, three plants which he planted in very deep rich soil. They flourished exceedingly, produced fruit in 1795, and continued to do so until autumn 1801. Being disappointed of obtaining suckers, Mr Robley applied to Dr Anderson, who advised him to lay bare some of the uppermost roots, and to wound them very deeply; and when this was done they almost immediately began to put forth shoots in abundance. Mr Robley thus obtained 120 fine plants, which were deposited in baskets with rich loose soil, and placed in the shade in the vicinity of water. Baskets were preferred to pots, because when deposited in the place where the plants were ultimately to remain, the baskets would speedily rot, and not repress the growth of the roots. Encouraged by the success of these experiments, Mr Robley prepared a point of land of loose sandy soil, bounded by a salt lagoon and the sea. When the tide filled, brackish water was to be
found everywhere at the depth of two feet and a half from the surface. It had been observed in some of the South Sea Islands, that bread-fruit trees grew in full vigour though brackish water bathed their roots. The land being ploughed and harrowed twice, was divided into beds twenty-seven feet in breadth, and the plants were put into the earth in the middle of each. In August 1801, Mr Robley had 153 plants in a flourishing condition; and, in the course of the subsequent year, 319, some of them productive. He transmitted to England specimens of the fruit preserved in vinegar, as it will not keep above two days after being taken from the tree. Other correspondents sent excellent specimens of cakes made from bread-fruit flour; and communicated the fact that a dry nutritious food, resembling tapioca in appearance and quality, might be prepared from it. The vegetation of this plant is very rapid. Ten of those committed to the care of Dr Anderson in 1793 were about two feet in height and half an inch in diameter; while in 1798, most of the trees were above thirty feet in height, and the stem two feet above the ground was from three feet to three and a half in circumference. They bore fruit during the greater part of the year, but were less productive between November and March. A single tree would often bear clusters of five and six, so as to bend the lower branches to the ground. According to the variety, the fruit was of various shapes and sizes, weighing from four to ten pounds, some smooth, others rough and tuberculated. When taken from the tree before maturity, the juice appeared of the consistency and colour of milk, and in taste somewhat similar. It issued for above ten minutes in an uninterrupted stream, and thickened into a glutinous substance. Three months were required to bring the fruit to perfection. A species of fruit bearing considerable analogy to those above described is found on the Nicobar Islands, and is not less useful to the natives. The tree vegetates promiscuously with others in the woods, but prefers a humid soil. Its trunk is straight, thirty or thirty-five feet in height, and from ten inches to two feet in circumference. The roots spring from it above the surface, and do not penetrate deep into the earth. The leaves are disposed like the large calyx of a flower; they are three feet long and four inches broad, of a dark green hue and tenacious substance. A long time elapses before the tree produces fruit, not less than about the period of human life. It then forms at the bottom of the leaves, from which it proceeds as it is enlarged, and, when nearly ripe, its colour changes from green to yellowish. This is the proper period for gathering it, when its weight is between thirty and forty pounds. The exterior surface is cut off, and the fruit is boiled in earthen pots during several hours, over a slow fire; it is then exposed to the air, and is next formed into a mass which, in taste, is not unlike maize. (J. G. D.)