266 
LXIV.—F00D GRAINS OF INDIA (continued). 
Corx GIGANTEA, ROXB. 
In discussing a new variety of the ordinary Job's tears (Coix Lach- 
ryma, L.), it was mentioned in Kew Bulletin for June 1888, p. 144, 
‘that the fruit possessed little or no nutritive value in the wild state, 
and its use was restricted to a few aboriginal tribes in Eastern Bengal 
and Assam. 
At that time we were aware that some cultivated plants of Coix 
yielded a compar aie nutritive grain, but their determination was by 
no means certain 
e have now _obtaive d, on the suggestion of Sir Joseph Hooker, 
sufficient information to warrant us in drawing the co eee that the 
cultivated Coix in the Khasia hills as also the cultivated Coix ikkim 
This 
the female as in the genus, but merous and three fold ; the two 
lateral ones sessiie, and the middle one pedicelled ; they are closely 
— round à — of the spike. The involucre is ovate, entire 
und the cireumfer . . .smooth, glossy . . d [in 
the wild plants] sxseodtnply is ha 
The portions of the above deberiptión | in italics indicate the characters 
which separate this species from C. Lachryma. Other points of dis- 
tinction are to be found in the generally larger size of the plants ; in the 
absence of spathes to the pedicels ; and in the pedicels not being jointed 
(i.e. the fruit is persistent). The chief character of C. gigantea as 
distinguished from C. Lachryma is, however, to be found in the male 
T arranged in groups of three, the two lateral being 
iie while the middle one is pedicelled. In C. Lachryma the male 
flo are few in number arranged loosely in the spike and always 
in pairs,—one sessile and the other pedicelled. The male flowers in 
C. gigantea are numerous, and closely inbricated in a spike nearly 
twice as long as in C. Lachryma. 
Roxburgh gives the habitat of C. gigantea “ chiefly in the valleys 
* amongst the Circar mountains and in Bengal.” There are specimens 
in the Kew Herbarium from East Bengal (Griffith) ; from Syong in 
the Khasia Hills (Hooker and Thomson, 1850), marked “the usual 
eultivated cereal;" from Sikkim, 4,000 feet, wild plants and also 
imen marked * cultivated ;" from Mysore, Carnatic, and Malabar 
(Stocks and Law); and from Gangetic Plain (Duthie, 1885). 
This species is not mentioned as cultivated either by Roxburgh or 
Griffith. In most works on economic botany the use of tle grain of 
Coix is exclusively associated with C. Lachryma. This is doubtless an 
error of identification. We have no evidence that C. Lachryma is 
or pete for the sake of the grain, although, as in the Naga Hills, Assam, 
n N.W. Luzon, Faeries (fide Vidal), the grain is gathered from 
