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Various names, as 108 example, ‘‘malanga,” ‘‘tanier,” ‘‘tannia,” 
“taya,” ‘‘coco” and ‘‘eddo”’ are i applied to the dasheen in 
different localities in the West Indies and other parts of tropical 
America. These names are likewise frequently used for the 
yautia and some of the other edible aroids of this class. For 
instance, in Dutch Guiana, “taya” is the general name by which 
dasheens, yautias and alocasias are known, there being for each 
particular variety a special name prefixed to the word “‘taya.” 
The name ‘‘dasheen” is known to be of West Indian origin 
and there appears to be unanimity of opinion among those who 
have inquired into the ne that it arose rong) a naa 
of an expression ‘‘da Chine’ ‘du Chine,” in one of the French 
dialects, oe ‘fro: mm China.” Mr. O. W. Barrett, sale 
of the Porto Rico Agricultural Experiment Station, who, with 
Mr. David Fairchild, of the United States Department of Agri- 
culture at Washington, was a pioneer in the poe tee of the 
edible aroids into this country, offered this explanation in a 
letter to the writer in 1911. This was confirmed later in a report 
by Mr. F. T. F. Dumont, then American consul at Guadeloupe, 
French West Indies, and still more recently by Mr 
Freeman, assistant director and government botanist of the 
Department of Agriculture of Trinidad. 
With a crop plant of so great merit near our doors it seems odd 
that the introduction of the dasheen was not accomplished many 
years ago. ‘True, the tubers have long been on the markets in a 
few southern cities where there is a considerable West Indian 
population to demand the vegetable, and on our South Atlantic 
coast, a certain variety of taro, under the name ‘‘tanyah,” has 
for years grown in a semi-wild state, but in the former case it is 
practically the foreign population only that has availed itself of 
the opportunity, and in the latter, the growing of the crop has 
never reached commercial proportions, even locally. It is per- 
haps, however, largely the indiscriminate importation of tubers, 
with little regard for variety, or quality, or manner of packing 
and offering an sale, that has prevented the acceptance of this 
class of food products by people who should welcome them. 
As previously stated, there are many varieties of dasheens, 
