111 
tant 
, if eaten before this poison has been dissipated, 
which is usually done by exposing the roots in thin slices to the 
action of running water for some hours 
same poison is produced in the bites cassava or manihot, 
the pace of which is general in tropical America and common 
in other tropical regions. For this reason it is rarely eaten. Its 
starch is-extracted and forms the tapioca of commerce. Sweet 
cassava, from another species of Manihot, is very largely eaten, 
as well as used for the extraction of tapioca. It is a large fusiform 
root like a very large dahlia root. It is the great root-crop of 
tropical America, and is eaten boiled, baked and roasted in the 
ashes, and is ae ee up into a flour from which cassava 
bread is made. This bread is noted for its keeping qualities. 
It may be carried on by travellers for months, or even years, 
if some care is taken with its storage. Sag a very similar 
starch to tapioca, but is made in the East ae from the soft 
inner portions of the trunks of a number of palms. Most of 
the article sold for sago in this country is really tapioca. True 
sago is of a reddish color. The flavor of the two is very similar. 
Arrow-root is a very expensive starch, made from the rootstock 
of Maranta and mostly produced in the West Indies. It is 
popularly supposed to have special nutritive, or even curative 
properties, but differs not from other starches in those particulars. 
A spurious Srrow-root starch is made in the West Indies and 
Florida from one or more species of Zamia. It is mostly used in 
making so-called arrow-root crackers of American manufacture. 
Of all the tropical vegetable foods, and indecd most important 
of all vegetable foods, is the banana, destined to become eventu- 
ally the chief food of the poorer classes of the entire world. The 
ripe banana, while a delicious dessert fruit, is not adapted to use 
as a common food, by virtue of its strong and sweet flavor and 
also its relative indigestibility. The same fruit, however, boiled, 
baked, or roasted when about three-fourths grown, has very 
much the flavor of a baked potato, with scarcely any sweetness, 
and is nutritious, non-cloying and perfectly digestible. The 
amount of this food that can be grown on an acre per year is so 
much in excess of any other as to make any comparison rather 
ridiculous. 
