364 ROOT CHOPS. 



There are seven or eight kinds of yams grown in India. Two 

 are of a remarkably fine flavor, one weighing as much as eighteen 

 pounds, the other three pounds. These are found in the Tartar 

 country. 



COCOS OE EDDOES, 



Arum esculentum. This root has not hitherto been considered of 

 sufficient importance to demand particular care in its cultivation, 

 except by those who are engaged in agricultural pursuits, and 

 derive their subsistence from the production of the soil. But 

 though the cultivation of the root is almost unknown to the higher 

 classes in society, and little regarded by planters in the colonies, 

 it is a most valuable article of consumption. Amongst the 

 laboring population it is the principal dependence for a supply of 

 food. Long droughts may disappoint the hopes of the yam crop, 

 storms and blight may destroy the plantain walks, but neither dry 

 or wet weather materially injure the coco ; it will always make 

 some return, and though it may not afford a plentiful crop, it will 

 yield a sufficiency until a supply can be had from other sources. 

 For this reason the laborer in the West Indies always takes care 

 to put in a good plant of cocos to his provision ground as a stand 

 by, and knowing their value, is perhaps the only person who be- 

 stows any degree of care or attention upon them. Previous to their 

 emancipation, whole families of negroes lived upon the produce of 

 one provision ground, and the coco formed the main article of their 

 support. Where the soil is congenial to the white and black 

 Bourbon coco, the labor of one industrious person once a fort- 

 night will raise a supply sufficient for the consumption of a 

 family of six or seven persons. The coco begins to bear after the 

 first year, and with common care and cultivation the same plant 

 ought to give annually two or three returns for several years. In 

 Jamaica, a disease something similar to that affecting the potato, 

 has been found injurious to the coco root. This disease, which has 

 baffled all inquiry as to its origin, affects the plants in and after 

 the second year of their being planted. The first indication of it 

 is the change in the leaves, which gradually turn to a yellow hue, 

 have a sickly appearance, and at length drop off at the surface of 

 the earth. The stock or " coco head," as it is called, below ground, 

 having become rotten, nothing but a soft pulpy mass remains. In 

 some fields every third or fourth root is thus affected, in others 

 much greater numbers are destroyed, so much so that the field re- 

 quires to be almost entirely replanted, by which not only an ex- 

 pense is entailed, but a heavy loss sustained, from the field being 

 thrown out of its regular bearing. The black coco seems to suffer 

 less than the white. 



Another species, the Taro ( Arum Colocasia, Colocasia esculenta 

 and macrorhizon) , is an important esculent root in the Polynesian 

 islands. In the dry method of culture practised on the mountains 



