174 NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



■which, we have proposed calling M. dulcis or mitis, although it has 

 received a great many other names. The latter is especially culti- 

 vated ia America, where it is grown generally, like the former, from 

 cuttings. They develop fleshy roots (?) underground, more or less 

 fusiform, sometimes very large, whose form recalls that of our 

 Dahlias. Those of M. doux, it is said, only contain fecula, and 

 may be eaten cooked in water or under embers; animals may 

 eat them raw without danger. But in M. amer there is also a 

 very deleterious and very volatile juice, which may be got rid of 

 by heat or the action of water. The roots are rasped and furnish 

 a piilp which is enclosed in a long bag, woven with the leaves or 

 fibres of the Palm, having a weight suspended at the end whose 

 traction squeezes out the dangerous juice mixed with the pulp ; after 

 which this bag, placed near the fire, soon contaius only a dry 

 powder or manioc floui-. Now, an ordinary press is used to extract 

 the juice. Tapioca is this same substance prepared in hard or 

 slightly elastic lumps, formed of very small spherical grains, and 

 changing into a viscid and transparent starch under the influence of 

 boiling water. In cassava, it is spread out in thin cakes, dried on a 

 heated iron plate. This fecula is used by the Galibis to prepare several 

 fermented driuks. Perhaps alcohol might be extracted from it for 

 economic use. Commerce also finds among the Euphorhiacece two 

 products of considerable importance ; a vegetable wax, furnished by 

 the Tallow tree,^ filling all the exterior coat of the seed ; and 

 an oU, called wood oil, extracted iu China from the inner parts of the 

 seeds of Aleurites cordata^ (fig. 170,171) used for burning, for 

 making very useful varnishes, to coat wood to protect it from the 

 action of damp, for rendering stuffs waterproof, and for a multitude . 

 of domestic purposes. The wood of the Euphorhiacece is generally but 

 slightly enduring. Still Securinega durissima ^ bears in the Mascarene 

 islands the name of hard wood and hatchet wood. Exccecaria 

 lanceolata^^ from Brazil, is a good building wood ; in Australia, that 



Lxfllngii Grah. — M. Grahmni Hook. Icon. Vernicia Cokb. in Ann. Mus. viii. 69, t. 32. 



t. 530. — M. pusilla Pohl. — Jatropha dulcis Blaococca Vernicia Spkeng. — E. cordata Bl. 



GrMEL. Onomat. y. 7. — H. Bn. hx JDiot. Encycl. B. verrucosa A.. Juas. — Vernicia montana LouB. 



■Sc. Med. he. cit. S62. — J. mitis Rottb. Surin. — Aleurites Vernicia Hassk. — Abrasin 'Kmrn/r. 



Descr. 21.—/. Palmata Vellos. Fl. Flmn. x. t. Amcen. Exot. 789. {Oil or Varnish tree Wn- 



81. (Aipi, Juca dulee.) lung of tlie Japaneae). 



1 Exccecaria sebifera M. Abo. (see p. 167, ' Emel, &/««. ii 4008. — S.nitidaW. Spec.rv. 

 note 2). 761.— A. Juas. Euphorbiae. t. 2, fig. 4,— H. Bn. 



2 M. Abg. Frodr. 724, n. 2. — Dnjandra .BajjAori/ac. t. 26, fig. 33-38. 



cordata THTmu. Fl. Jap. 267, t. 27. — B. * Actinostemon lanceolatmn Saldanh. in Adan- 



