The Caladium esculentum, an aquatic plant, furnishes the large Taro roots which, boiled to a thick paste, form the chief food of the Sandwich Islanders, and are extensively cultivated in many other groups of the South Seas. It grows like rice on a marshy ground, the large sagittated leaves rise on high foot-stalks, immediately springing from the root, and are likewise very agreeable to the taste, but are more seldom eaten, as they are used for propagation. Severed from the root, they merely require to be planted in the mud to produce after six months a new harvest of roots. The growth is so abundant that 1,500 persons can live upon the produce of a single square mile, so that supposing the United Kingdom to be one vast taro-field, its surface would be able to nourish about two thousand millions of souls. As there is a mountain-rice which thrives without artificial irrigation, there is also a mountain-taro (_Caladium cristatum_), which resembles the former in general appearance, but prefers a more dry and elevated soil. Although the plant grows wild both in the Society and Marquesas Islands, yet Pitcairn’s Island was the only spot where Mr. Bennett saw it cultivated. But the possession of a plant which furnishes so much food with so little labour, can hardly be considered as a benefit for the Sandwich Islanders, whose natural indolence is too much encouraged by the abundance it creates. The Hawaiian constantly sees before his eyes the coffee-groves and sugar-plantations, the cotton and indigo fields, which, cultivated by Chinese coolies, amply reward the enterprise of the European and American settlers in his native land, and yet he saunters by, too indolent even to stretch out his hand and gather the berries from the trees. It may easily be imagined that the tropical sun, which distils so many costly juices and fiery spices in indescribable multiplicity and abundance, must also produce a variety of fruits. But man has as yet done but little to improve by care and art these gifts of Nature, and, with rare exceptions, the delicious flavour for which our native fruits are indebted to centuries of cultivation, is found wanting in those of the torrid zone. In our gardens Pomona appears in the refined garb of civilisation, while in the tropics she still shows herself as a savage beauty, requiring the aid of culture for the full development of her attractions.