This tree belongs to the family of the _Anacardiaceæ_, and is indigenous in the Society, Friendly, and Fiji Islands.[990] The natives consumed quantities of the fruit at the time of Cook’s voyage. It is like a large plum, of the colour of an apple, and contains a stone covered with long hooked bristles.[991] The flavour, according to travellers, is excellent. It is not among the fruits most widely diffused in tropical colonies. It is, however, cultivated in Mauritius and Bourbon, under the primitive Polynesian name _evi_ or _hevi_,[992] and in the West Indies. It was introduced into Jamaica in 1782, and thence into Saint Domingo. Its absence in many of the hot countries of Asia and Africa is probably owing to the fact that the species was discovered, only a century ago, in small islands which have no communications with other countries. +Strawberry+—_Fragaria vesca_, Linnæus. Our common strawberry is one of the most widely diffused plants, partly owing to the small size of its seeds, which birds, attracted by the fleshy part on which they are found, carry to great distances. It grows wild in Europe, from Lapland and the Shetland Isles[993] to the mountain ranges in the south; in Madeira, Spain, Sicily, and in Greece.[994] It is also found in Asia, from Armenia and the north of Syria[995] to Dahuria. The strawberries of the Himalayas and of Japan,[996] which several authors have attributed to this species, do not perhaps belong to it,[997] and this makes me doubt the assertion of a missionary[998] that it is found in China. It is wild in Iceland,[999] in the north-east of the United States,[1000] round Fort Cumberland, and on the north-west coast,[1001] perhaps even in the Sierra-Nevada of California.[1002] Thus its area extends round the north pole, except in Eastern Siberia and the basin of the river Amur, since the species is not mentioned by Maximowicz in his _Primitiæ Floræ Amurensis_. In America its area is extended along the highlands of Mexico; for _Fragaria mexicana_, cultivated in the _Jardin des Plantes_, and examined by Gay, is _F. vesca_. It also grows round Quito, according to the same botanist, who is an authority on this question.[1003] The Greeks and Romans did not cultivate the strawberry. Its cultivation was probably introduced in the fifteenth or sixteenth century. Champier, in the sixteenth century, speaks of it as a novelty in the north of France,[1004] but it already existed in the south, and in England.[1005]