s, are frequently tempted to
eat it in its natural state, but they invariably pay a severe penalty for
the mistake. The following extract, from Captain Cook's * first voyage,
gives one instance of this:

(*Footnote. Volume 2 page 624.)

The third sort, which, like the second, is found only in the Northern
parts, seldom grows more than ten feet high, with small pinnated leaves,
resembling those of some kind of fern; it bears no cabbage, but a
plentiful crop of nuts, about the size of a large chestnut, but rounder.
As the hulls of these were found scattered round the places where the
Indians had made their fires it was taken for granted that they were fit
to eat; however those who made the experiment paid dear for their
knowledge to the contrary, for they operated both as an emetic and
cathartic, with great violence: still however it was not doubted but they
were eaten by the Indians, and, in order to determine this more clearly,
they were carried to the hogs, who might be supposed to have a
constitution as strong as the Indians, although the ship's people had
not. The hogs ate them indeed, and for some time apparently without
suffering any inconvenience, but in about a week they were so much
disordered that two of them died; the rest were recovered with great
difficulty. It is probable however that the poisonous quality of these
nuts may lie in the juice, like that of the cassada of the West Indies,
and that the pulp, when dried, may be not only wholesome but nutritious.

...

MODE OF RENDERING THEM INNOXIOUS.

The native women collect the nuts from the palms in the month of March,
and, having placed them in some shallow pool of water, they leave them to
soak for several days. When they have ascertained that the by-yu has been
immersed in water for a sufficient time they dig, in a dry sandy place,
holes which they call mor-dak; these holes are about the depth that a
person's arms can reach, and one foot in diameter; they line them with
rushes and fill them up with the nuts, over which they sprinkle a little
sand, and then cover the holes nicely over with the tops of the
grass-tree; in about a fortnight the pulp which encases the nut becomes
quite dry, and it is then fit to eat, but if eaten before that it
produces the effects already described. The natives eat this pulp both
raw and roasted; in the latter state they taste quite as well as a
chestnut. The process which these nuts undergo in the hands of the
natives