CHAPTER VII. 



Other Vegetable Substances used for Substantive Food. 



IT may be useful and interesting to take a rapid 

 view of the food which the vegetable kingdom offers 

 to large bodies of mankind for cultivation, in addition 

 to those most important productions, the corn-plants 

 and the potato, which we have fully noticed. 



CASSAVA. Jatropha Manihot. 



THIS plant is known also as the edible-rooted phys- 

 ic-nut, and in Brazil it bears the name of Mandioc. 

 It springs from a tough, branched, woody root, the 

 slender collateral fibres of which swell into those 

 farinaceous masses for which alone the plant is cul- 

 tivated. 



The height to which the cassava attains varies from 

 four to six feet; it rises by a slender, woody, knotted 

 stalk, furnished with alternate palmated leaves, which 

 are smooth, and increase in breadth till within an inch 

 and a half from the top, when they diminish to an 

 acute point. The middle lobes are six inches long, 

 and two inches broad in the broadest part ; the two 

 next are an inch shorter, and the outer lobes are only 

 three inches long. 



South America is held to be the native region of 

 this plant, which formerly afforded the greatest part 

 of their sustenance to the entire Indian population of 

 that vast region. In the Mexican states, cassava is 

 more used on the western than on the eastern coast. 



