April t, 1889.] THE TROPICAL 
AGRICULTURIST. 
only too valuable for tea boxes. — No doubt the 
tea plant is indigenous in Burma as well as Assam, 
but the "eating tea" as described, with seeds on 
the lower sides of the leaves, cannot be a tea or 
anything allied to tea. As to the " bee in the 
bonnet," there can be no possible mistake, but as 
the Scotch say " Lat be." — Ed.] 
WHITE -ANTS AND GUMS. 
Dear Sie, — With reference to your paragraph re 
white-ants, I have seen fine young gums, a tree 
white-ants are particularly fond of, flourishing one 
day and beginning to wither the next: on examina- 
tion found roots being eaten by white-ants. This 
happens not once, but a hundred times, a clearing 
of mine being absolutely spoilt by them. — Yours 
faithfully, TIMBER TREES. 
[That white-ants attack the Australian eucalypti 
was a fact quite new to us until this letter and the one 
we published yesterday reaohed us. At the elevations 
at which we have observed these trees, white-ants 
are non-existent. At what elevation has our corre- 
spondent had his experience ? And has anyone 
else suffered similarly? — Ed..] 
THE CUSH-OUSH YAM AND THE NEW 
POTATO-LIKE TUBER FROM PERU. 
The Nurseries, Nuwara Eliya, 26th Feb. 1889. 
Dear Sir, — In your issue of the 22nd instant 
I note your paragraph in reference to the " hush- 
hush" yams sent to you by Dr. Stork, and grown 
in the Hsnaratgoda district. 
Your remarks on this most delicate of ground 
roots are of much interest to me. You say "These 
tubers are, we suppose, an introduction from India," 
and you go on to remark how tender and nice and 
tasty they are. 
These yams were introduced by me 12 years ago 
from the Island of Grenada, West Indies, along 
with other varieties of yams, bananas (plantains), 
edocs, &c, and you gave a very favourable report 
in the Observer on some of the first roots raised at 
Kandy, stating that you found them " more 
flowery and light than the best Australian potatoes." 
We cannot, of course, expect even the editors of 
the Observer and Tropical Agriculturist to remember 
the history of all the numerous new products 
tried of late years. That is but a small matter 
however, and I sm very glad to learn that theBe 
delicious ground roots are being successfully grown 
near Henaratgoda. To my own knowledge, they 
have been raised in some quantity in the 
Dumbara and ' Veyangoda districts for years 
back, and the wonder is they are not regularly 
obtainable in the Colombo and Kandy markets, 
I should have cultivated them to a much greater 
extent, but our Kandy garden is too limited to do 
so. We got however splendid returns from the 
small spaces planted, — as much as at the rate of 
14 tons per acre, and we still keep up the culti- 
vation at Kandy, where plants are now available. 
I am sorry we cannot manage them up here, in 
Nuwara Eliya. If they could be grown at the 
higher elevations, they would be a great boon, now 
that potatoes are such a risky crop. The latter 
are almost invariably attacked with the disease or 
fungus, as soon as the blossoms appear. 
While on the subject of edible ground roots, a 
few notes on the new tuber from the elevated regions 
of the Peruvian Andes may be of interest to some 
of your readers. I have just taken up the tubers 
from a small patch devoted to this plant, the 
tylueua tuberosds, and I send you a small lot of 
them us a sample. I feel sure this introduction 
might be of great value to the poor villagers in 
many parts of Ceylon, and its cultivation is of 
the most simple description. It throws out rootlets 
at the joints of its procumbent stems, and on these 
crowds of small tubers are formed, from the size 
of a pea to that of a hen's egg. The plot in 
question was 40 square feet in extent, and the crop 
we gathered weighed 42 lb., or say 1 lb. to the 
square foot. The ground was ordinary garden soil, 
not manured, and no attention was given to the 
bed beyond giving it a single weeding. With good 
cultivation and manure I should think that from 
8 to 9 tons per acre could be harvested. Mr. 
Nock of the Hakgala Gardens remarks in the last 
report, that tubers were raised there to the weight 
of J oz. Among those sent you will be found some 
of the weight of 1 oz., and we may therefore 
conclude that with good cultivation they will 
increase in size, and very probably improve in 
quality. — Yours faithfully, 
ALEXANDER WHYTE, 
Florist and Naturalist. 
[We are sorry that Mr. Whyte's claim to credit for 
the intreduction should have been for a moment 
forgotten, but we were misled by reading the name 
given by Dr. Stork as kusle-kusle. The Andean 
tubers are not floury, but have a good deal the 
taste of nuts. — Ed.] 
THE GAMBIER PLANT. 
Peradeniya, 8th March. 
Sir, — The letter from Mr. Corbet printed on 
page 671 requires correction on one point : 
the true gambier plant does not grow in 
Ceylon. The specie's — we have but one — of Uncariu 
found here was, it is true, supposed by Thwaites 
to be U. Gambier, and was published as such in 
his " Enumeratio " in 1859, but Sir Joseph Hooker 
has since shown (Fl. Brit. India, iii, 31) that it 
is not that species, but is to be referred as a 
variety, var. Tliwaitesii, Hk.f., to U. dasyoneura, 
Korth., the type of which is also native to the 
Malay Peninsula, and it is so entered in my 
Systematic Catalogue of Ceylon Plants, p. 41. It 
is a common enough plant in the moist region of 
our lowcountry up to about 2,000 feet, climbing 
by hooks (whence its name) over bushes and trees, 
but I am not aware that it possesses any Sin- 
halese name, or is of use in any way. It affords 
no gambier ; at least, 1 have been unable to produce 
from it anything like that substance. In reference 
to this I may quote here a portion of a letter 
which I wrote to the Director of Kew Gardens on 
the subject in Sept. 1880, which was published 
in the Report of that institution for the same 
year, p. 37:— "In the urgent demand for 'new 
products' here one of the first things I tried 
was to make some gambier from our plant. It 
grows commonly not far from the Garden. I fol- 
lowed the account given in the books, but 
could not succeed in producing the correot article. 
A very excellently astringent extract is easily 
obtained, but it is black like liquorice or the Acacia 
catechu extract and not at all like ' terra japonica. ' " 
Whether this substance would have any economic 
value, only a trial of the market could determine. 
The real gambier plant (U. Gambier, Roxb.) appears 
to be confined, in the wild state, to portions of the 
Malay Peninsula and Sumatra. I have on several 
occasions endeavoured to introduce it here from 
Singapore where it is so largely cultivated. The 
result of the last attempt is given in my report 
for 1887, p. 14. We have now no specimen in the 
Gardens. — I am, yours faithfully. 
HENRY TKIMEN. 
