This is a fine, handsome, palm-like plant, rising with a long, 
jointed stem, and having a cluster of leaves at the extremity. 
It is a native of the West Indian Islands, and of the wanner 
parts of South America. We are assured by Brown, in his 
Natural History of Jamaica, that the stalk is employed to bring 
sugar to a good grain, when the juice is too viscid, and cannot 
be made to granulate properly by the application of lime alone. 
The acrid nature of the Aroidece, in general, is well known. 
In that quality, perhaps, the present individual yields to no 
other. Sloane describes the species as " labris degustantes 
mutos reddens." Hence the term of Dumb Cane, an appella- 
tion fully justified by a recent instance which I have heard of 
in this climate. When Mr Macnab, the excellent Superin- 
tendant of the Edinburgh Botanic Garden, was at Kew, a box 
of these plants arrived there from Cayenne. One of the men 
employed to remove the individuals to the stove, incautiously 
bit a piece of one of them, when his tongue swelled to such a 
degree that he could not move it ; he became utterly incapable 
of speaking, and was confined to the house for some days, in 
the most excruciating torments. The slightest application to 
the tongue of the juice from the spadix, gives great pain, as I 
have myself experienced. It is said to impart an indelible 
stain to linen. 
The drawing was made from a fine plant which flowered in 
the Royal Botanic Garden, Glasgow, in the middle of winter. 
A, Plant about j^th of the natural size. Fig. 1, Spatha, nat. size. Fig. 2. 
The same cut open, to shew the Spadix. Fig. 3. Single Stamen. Fig. 4. 
Two of the Cells of the Anther cut open transversely. Fig. 5. Two of 
the Cells entire. Fig. 6. Three Pistils, with the accompanying clavate 
bodies. Fig. 7. Germen, cut through trmsverselys— All from Fig. 3. are 
more or less magnified. 
