Various substances have been employed in different parts of the world as substitutes for making bread, in the absence of farinaceous or flour-yielding vegetables. The bread tree, or rather the fruit of this tree, ranks first among the substances alluded to. The bread tree is common in many parts of the east. It is very abundant at Surinam, where extensive avenues may be seen of it, loaded with luxuriant crops of fruit. As a brief account of this extraordinary tree cannot fail to be interesting to our readers (previous to giving a description of the mode of preparing the fruit for food), we beg to lay before them the following remarks and extracts.

All the species of the bread fruit tree, of which there are eight, are natives of the South Sea islands. More than one hundred and fifty years ago, this tree had excited great interest amongst Europeans, and particularly amongst the people of Great Britain. Dampier, who performed his voyage round the world in 1668, thus describes it: -

"The bread fruit as we call it, grows on a large tree as big and high as our largest apple trees; it hath a spreading head, full of branches and dark leaves. The fruit grows on the boughs like apples; it is as big as a penny loaf when wheat is at five shillings the bushel; it is of a round shape, and hath a thick tough rind. When the fruit is ripe it is yellow and soft, and the taste is sweet and pleasant The natives of Guam use it for bread. They gather it when it is full grown, while it is green and hard; then they bake it in an oven, which scorcheth the rind and maketh it black; but they scrape off the black crust, and there remains a tender thin crust; and the inside is soft, tender, and white, like the crumb of a penny loaf. There is neither core nor stone in the inside, but all is of a pure substance like bread. It must be eaten new, for if kept more than twenty-four hours, it becomes hard and choaky; but it is very pleasant before it is too stale. This fruit lasts in season eight months in the year; during which the natives eat no other sort of bread kind. I did never see this fruit anywhere but here. The natives told us there was plenty of this fruit growing on the rest of the Ladrone islands; and I did never hear of it anywhere else."

So much for Dampier's account, which, however, does not appear to be quite correct. The great circumnavigator, Cook, thus describes the fruit in question: - "It grows on a tree about the size of a middling oak. Its leaves are frequently a foot and a half long, of an oblong shape, deeply sinuated like those of the fig-tree, which they resemble in consistence and colour, and in the exuding of a white milky juice upon being broken. The fruit is about the size and shape of a child's head, and the surface is reticulated, not much unlike a truffle. It is covered with a thin skin, and hath a core about as big as the handle of a small knife. The eatable part lies between the skin and the core. It is as white as snow, and somewhat of the consistence of new bread. It must be roasted before it is eaten; being divided into three or four parts. Its taste is insipid, with a slight sourness, somewhat resembling that of the crumb of wheaten bread, mixed with a Jerusalem artichoke."

The above is the sober and satisfactory account of the bread tree and its fruit, as given by the illustrious Cook. Dr. Hawkesworth's description of its advantages is amusing, but extravagant. He says, "if a man plants ten bread fruit trees in his lifetime, which he may do in about an hour, he will as completely fulfil his duty to his own and future generations, as the natives of our less temperate climate can by ploughing in the cold winter, and reaping in the summer's heat, as often as those seasons return. Even if, after he has procured bread for his present household, he should convert the surplus into money, and lay it up for his children."

The bread fruit tree has been planted in some of the West India colonies, but with little success as to any advantages to be derived from it. Indeed, its fruit appears to us to have been greatly exaggerated with respect to its beneficial application as food for the use of man. It has been observed, however, that "even in those colonies into which the bread fruit has not been generally introduced as an article of food, it is used as a delicacy; or whether employed as bread, or in the form of pudding, it is considered as highly palatable by the European inhabitants."