The bread-nuts look on the outside like the bread-fruit, but the inside contains a great mass of closely packed nuts like large chestnuts. These are not good raw, but are fine when baked or boiled.
ANNOTTO.
We have often heard people speak of butter and cheese being colored, but did not know that the dairyman was obliged to send to the West Indies for his dye. The bush which provides it is called the annotto or annatto. It grows to the size of the quince tree. The leaves are heart-shaped; and the rosy flowers are followed by fuzzy red-and-yellow pods, something like chestnut burs.
These small burs are filled with a crimson pulp containing many seeds. This pulp is immersed in water a few weeks, strained and boiled to a paste. The paste is made into cakes and dried in the sun. Then it comes to our country and appears upon our tables in butter or cheese.
Can you tell me where bay rum comes from? We have often wondered, and find here an answer to the question. It is furnished by the bay tree, which grows here. The leaves are distilled and the oil extracted from them to furnish this perfume for the bath.
SPICES.
Spices, in some form, are served every day upon our table; yet few of us know where they come from, or where, how, or upon what they grow.
We have heard of the Spice Islands, perhaps, and we just take it for granted that they all grow there. We are very much surprised, then, to find many of the spices in Puerto Rico.
ALLSPICE, OR PIMENTO.
The pimento spice is native to this soil. The groves of these trees are beautiful. The trees grow to a height of thirty feet, their stems are smooth and clean, and their leaves glossy.