6 
Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 
PLANTS. 
Honey eeom Canes called Sugar (MeAt to KaXdfXLvov to Xeyo/xevov 
o-axap). 
Saccharimi officinarum, Linn. 
With reference to the suggestion made in the previous Paper, pp. 
330, 335, that the " stones, described by Strabo as being dug up in 
India, which are of the colour of frankincense, and sweeter than figs 
or honey," were sugar- candy, it may be of interest to state, that Babar, 
in his " Memoirs, referring to a period about a. d. 1504, says that 
" the commodities imported into Cabul from Hindostan are slaves, white 
clothes, sugar-candy, refined and common sugar, drugs and spices." 
The Indian Eeed (KaAajao? 'IvSikos). 
JBorassus flalelliformis^ Linn, — The Palmyra Palm. 
"When identifying the Indian reed" of the Greeks and Eomans with 
the Palmyra palm, instead of with the bamboo, as it has generally been, 
by previous writers, I stated, in addition to the arguments upon which 
that opinion was formed, that the Sanskrit name for the palm was trina- 
raja^ or ''king of the reeds," from which the Greeks very possibly derived 
their idea as to the nature of the plant. Put, as regards the possible 
size to which a bamboo may grow under favourable circumstances, 
some further remarks are now called for. Colonel Yule (Anglo-Indian 
Glossary) states that an effort to procure the largest obtainable bamboo 
in Pegu, in the year 1855, yielded one of only a little over 10 inches 
in diameter ; and recently, in the Colonial Exhibition, the largest in 
the collection I found to be just 10 inches in its maximum diameter, 
being somewhat compressed in section. 
However, Professor Hseckel, in his account of his visit to Ceylon,^* 
speaks of bamboos in the Botanic Gardens 1 to 2 feet thick, the 
precise meaning of which is exemplified by the addition that a child 
of three could therefore stand inside one section of the main stem. 
There is, moreover, the authority of Clusius, quoted by Colonel Yule, 
that he had seen two great specimens in the University at Leyden, 
30 feet long and from 14 to 16 inches in diameter. 
Such monsters may occur under favourable circumstances in 
Ceylon, just as Hseckel also describes Arabian palms, which in Ceylon 
12 Erskine, p. 138, and Sir A. Burne's Cahool, pp. 79 and 84. 
13 A Visit to Ceylon, translated by Clara BeU, p. 136. 
