BARRINGTONIA SEED AS A SAKAI FOOD. 
From Mr. W. H. CRADDOCK of the Forest; Department, I have 
received specimens of a fruit and seed of a species of Barringtonia 
of which he writes as follows. I send you an article of Sakai Diet 
which I procured at a Sakai camp near here (Kuantan). The 
Malays call it Putat Gajah. The large kernel of the fruit is grated 
on a thorny piece of cane a yard long, (the kernel being rubbed up 
and down like a fiddle bow with rosin) water is added to the grat- 
ings and squeezed out by hand as a milk not unlike the milk from 
coconut gratings. This milk is allowed to settle in boat-shaped 
dishes of palm sheal-hs, the water is decanted off and the deposit 
made into cakes which are roasted and eaten. The gratings if 
eaten before water is added are said to make one “ Mabok ” (sick.) 
With the specimens came the cane used for grating, a portion 
of stem of a Calamus the sheaths of which was removed at one end 
so as to make a handle, and the thorns on the upper part removed 
so as to leave their ba^es only which made the cane rough enough 
to act as a rasper. The boat for collecting the milk is about a foot 
long made of palm sheaths,, the ends fastened with split rattan. 
The barringtonia fruit is about the size of a turkey’s egg oval about 
4 inches long and 7 inches girth. The pericarp is not very thick 
about i inch, the eudocar’p is fibrous and woody nearly as thick, 
the seed 2 inches across round and grooved, the embryo white and 
large. 
The seeds of several species of Barringtonia , are eaten in the 
Fiji islands and Formosa, but many of them rontain an intoxica- 
ting property analogous to Tuba which is used in stupefying fish. 
1 am not certain as to what species of Barringtonia, this belongs 
to. The fruit somewhat resembles that of the sea-shore B. raoe- 
mosa, Roxb. hut is larger than any form of that which I have seen. 
There are at least eleven species of the genus in the Peninsula of 
several of which ripe fruit is unknown^ 
The name Putat Gajah, I have found applied to several species 
viz. B. fusiform is, B. sumatrana Miq. and B. Scortechinii, King 
1 suspect that this fruit belongs to the latter species of which 1 have 
not seen ripe fruit. The name Putat applied to all species of 
Barringtonia , here. Pudja or Pucha (in Macassar) is doubtless 
connected with the word Yutu applied to them in Fiji. 
Editor. 
THE MOSQUITO PLANT. 
Ocimum viride. 
A good deal of interest has been caused by the discovery in 
Africa of the fact that a kind cf wild basil there viz. Ocimum viride 
has been found to keep away Mosquitoes when planted in or round 
houses, as seeds of this plant have been received in the Botanic 
Gardens, Singapore, and have germinated well, it may interest our 
readers to see what has already been within about it, when the 
