964 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HIST. SOCIETY, Vol. XXI. 



to it, the cake will indeed be very sweet ; if certain fruits and 

 pungent substances be added to the above, the cake will be of 

 an agreeable taste. If the Odial flour be mixed with the scrapings 

 of the kernel of the cocoanut, and powdered rice, cummin, pepper 

 and chilly ; if the paste be steamed and the cake be broken and 

 dried, it can be preserved for two months. ISo other cakes will 

 resemble the above. Sweets are more agreeable to cakes of the 

 above description. If curds, milk, ghee, and cocoanut milk be 

 added to the paste of the Odial flour, and be steamed, the cakes^ 

 when used, has the power of retinendi seminis virilis in corjyore sine 

 'pollutione, conferenclique facultatem Jioras m thalamo jugali irrotraliere, 

 and increasing muscular strength ; the person will not be reduced 

 by labour. 



I shall now tell you, Lady, of the difierent kinds of gruel made 

 of the Odial flour ; in the boiling water in which fish, chillies, lob- 

 sters, acid, grits of rice, have previously been put, in proportion, by 

 little quantities, the Odial flour ; stir it, and when it gets boiled 

 and reaches a proper consistency, take the vessel out of the hearth 

 and use it; if certain healthful (?".e., that contributes to the im- 

 provement of one's health) fruits be added to the above, anj^body 

 maj^ use it. If in water, salt and grits of rice and small fish be- 

 put first, and when they get boiled, if Odial floiir, mixed Avith 

 acid and powdered chillies, be poured in and properly stirred,, 

 the gruel infused, will be a very healthful one ; if herbs and 

 certain fruits be added to the above, the gruel will be a very good 

 one. The people, Mdien they dig the edible Palmyra roots, 

 take some of them and roast in the fire, remove the outer covering' 

 and then eat the roots by mastication. If the roasted roots be 

 exposed to the dew and be eaten on the following moiniing, it will 

 be very nice indeed. The edible Palmyra roots are boiled by steam 

 in water and eaten ; also such boiled roots are like the Odial 

 mentioned before, dried in the sun and preserved for future- 

 use. The accompaniments that are to be taken with roasted and 

 boiled edible Palmyra roots, are cocoanut, salt, — and pungent 

 substances. 



People may eat the sprout that just shoots forth out of the 

 Palmyra stone; the stone, in a certain &tage, may be roasted in 



