ROOT CEOPS. 355 



arrowroot, probably the produce of Tacca pinnatifida. It is 

 generally spherical, bat also often ovoid, elliptic, or rounded, with 

 a prolongation in the form of a neck, suddenly terminated by a 

 plane. 



The tacca plant grows at Zanzibar, and is found naturalised on 

 the high islands of the Pacific. The art of preparing arrowroot 

 from it is aboriginal with the Polynesians and Feejeeans. 



At Tahiti the fecula is procured by washing the tubers, scraping 

 off their outer skin, and then reducing them to a pulp by friction, 

 on akind of rasp, made by winding coarse twine (formed of the coco- 

 nut fibre) regularly round a board. The pulp is washed with sea 

 water through a sieve, made of the fibrous web which protects 

 the young frond of the coco-nut palm. The strained liquor is re- 

 ceived in a wooden trough, in which the fecula is deposited ; and 

 the supernatant liquor being poured off, the sediment is formed 

 into balls, which are dried in the sun for twelve or twenty-four 

 hours, then broken and reduced to powder, which is spread out 

 in the sun further to dry. In some parts of the world cakes of 

 a large size are made of the meal, which form an article of diet 

 in China, Cochin-China, Travancore, &c., where they are eaten by 

 the natives with some acid to subdue their acrimony. 



Some twenty varieties of the Ti plant (JDiacaena terminalis) are 

 cultivated in the Polynesian islands. There is, however, but one 

 which is considered farinaceous and edible. In Java the root is 

 considered a valuable medicine in dysentery. 



Within the last three or four years, considerable quantities of a 

 feculent substance, called Tous les mois, have been imported from 

 the West Indies. It is cultivated in Barbados, St. Kitts, and the 

 French islands, and is said to be prepared by a tedious and trouble- 

 someprocess from the rhizomes of various species of Canna Coccinea, 

 Achiras, glauca, and edulis. It approaches more nearly to potato 

 starch than to any other fecula, but its particles are larger. Like 

 the other amylaceous substances, it forms a valuable and nutritious 

 article of food for the invalid. 



The large tuberous roots of the Canna are equal in size to the 

 human head. The plant attains in rich soils a statare of fourteen feet, 

 and is identical, it is supposed, with the Achira of Choco, which 

 has an esculent root highly esteemed ; and my friend, Dr. Hamil- 

 ton, of Plymouth, has named it provisionally, in consequence, 

 Canna achira. The starch of this root, he asserts, is superior to 

 that of the Mar ant a. 



BOOT CEOPS. 



AMONGST tuberous rooted plants, which serve as food for man in 

 various quarters of the globe, the principal are the common potato, 

 yam, cocoes or eddoes, sweet potatoes, taro, tacca, arrowroot, 

 cassava, or manioc, and the Apios (ArracacJia escidenta). There are 

 others of less importance, which may be incidentally mentioned. 



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