Ball — On the Colloquies of Garcia De Orta — II. 675 
gregos of the Spanisli was tutia and espodio dos Arabios was tabasheer ; 
by the Indians it was called sacarmambu, i.e. sugar of the bamboo. 
Garcia says that talascir means milk, &c., that hibernated or was 
concealed. 
It was largely purchased in India by Persians and Arabians 
for export. Garcia describes the plant, and says the internodes were 
Si palmo (cubit) long and that the tabasheer was generated at the knots. 
He alludes to a myth of the Arabs, that it was produced by burning 
I the roots of the cane, and adds that if the carpenters met with it they 
anointed their loins with it and their foreheads if they had headache, 
j He points out the errors of the ancients with regard to its origin. It 
i was used by the native physicians for both external and internal in- 
' flammation, for fevers, and as an astringent in choleraic fluxes. 
[Eeferences. — Clusius (Acosta), P- 17 ; Linschoten, ii., p. 56 ; PisOy 
Mantissa Aromatica, pp. 185-187 ; Ainslie, i., pp. 419-21 ; Kliory^ 
p. 559; Cohn in Cohi^s Beitrdge^ Bd. iv., p. 365. See also Yule's 
> Glossary, pp. 674-5.] 
In my remarks on the Eamboo made on former occasions to the 
i Academy I pointed out that the " Indian reed " of Herodotus was not, 
[as had generally been supposed, the bamboo, but was the Palmyra palm, 
Eand that it had furnished the canoes of which he writes. I further 
; pointed out that the bamboo never grew to a size consistent with the 
statements of some writers. It was evident that there must have been 
some mistake in the quotations from Acosta. Accordingly I now give a 
translation of an extract from Acosta' s chapter on tabasheer, which shows 
that in parts of India the internodes of the bamboo were used as 
cylinders for flotation not as canoes. This in addition to what I have 
■previously published on the subject finally disposes of the myth.^ 
I " Sometimes those trees or canes called mamhu, in which tabasheer 
■is formed, are found of such size and thickness that skiffs are made of 
them which are able to carry two men each, not indeed by excavating 
them, but by cutting them to lengths of two internodal spaces \^lit. 
cutting them off (exeidentes), leaving only two internodal spaces] like 
skiffs. Pairs of naked Indians are wont to get on (for it is the 
custom to go naked in this country) and to sit one at each 
extremity with crossed legs and holding in each hand an oar three or 
four palms in length, with which they propel these skiffs with such 
iexterity that they are even able to navigate rapid streams against 
.'■the current with the greatest speed, as I have seen with my own 
^ Froc.f ser. ii., vol. ii., pp. 366-337, and antea, pp. 6 and 8. 
