The plant is

as an article of invalid diet. found wild both in the tropical parts of South America, where it is the principal vegetable food of the savage tribes dwelling along the shores and availing themselves of the inexhaustible fishy stores of the mighty river Maranon, and between the same latitudes of Africa. In many of the newly-explored countries of the interior of this vast continent, it is very largely employed. They commonly make it into a kind of gruel, which our travelling missionaries complain of as disgustingly insipid. It may indeed be thought extraordinary, that in regions basking under a tropical sun, and blest with soil of unrivalled fertility, the natives should content themselves with planting, as their sole regular crop, a root with nothing, seemingly, but its large returns and easy culture to recommend it. But to uninstructed human beings, scarcely raised above a mere animal condition, and enervated by the effects of excessive and unremitting heat, perfect idleness appears to be the enjoyment prized above all others; whilst Nature herself seems to have said, even to the tropical man, "If you choose

to live lazily, at least you shall not fare sumptuously on my gifts." How, by the progress of the arts of civilisation, men have been enabled to live both lazily and sumptuously on the labour of others, is no part of my present subject. I leave it for your consideration, and now bid you adieu.

21

LETTER III.

ON VEGETABLE ARTICLES OF FOOD.

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MY DEAR BOY,- - In last letter I gave you a general account of the division of vegetable food, called the farinaceous. I now proceed to inform you what other matter in vegetables is nourishing to man.

The first that I shall mention cannot fail to afford us an agreeable topic. It is the sugary or saccharine principle, of which the juices of plants are the chief source.

The sensation of sweetness is naturally and essentially agreeable to the palate, as the colours of the rainbow are to the eye; so much so, that in all languages the term has been figuratively extended to a great variety of delightful qualities and actions; thus we speak of the sweetness of a hay-field, of a rose, or, in the words of Shakspeare, of the

"sweet south that breathes upon a bank of violets."

We also say a sweet voice, a sweet strain of music, a sweetly coloured picture, and, best of all, a sweet temper.

Sweetness is found both in animal and mineral substances. Among others, we have sugar of milk, and sugar of lead; but it is from the juices of plants alone, either extracted by the labour of the bee, or prepared by human art, that the saccharine matter is procured in such purity and abundance as to be collected as honey, or manufactured into real sugar, and become an important article of diet. Honey is obtained, as you are aware, from the nectaries, or honey-cups of flowers; but the quantity contained in each cup is so small, that it is impossible to collect it by hand, and it is of no benefit to us till it has been rendered fit for our use by the labours of the industrious bee.

That species of the insect called the honey or hive bee, has been domesticated by man from time immemorial, and supplied with a dwelling; but wild honey is still procured in considerable quantities in the forests of

Russia, where the bees form their combs in hollow trees; and in greater abundance in the western parts of the interior of Africa, where the hunter is often guided to their hoard by watching the motions of a small bird called the honey-buzzard. The history of honey-making is as follows:- The bee creeps into a flower, and sucks out, by means of its trunk, the sweet juice of the nectary, which it pours into its mouth and swallows. Part serves it for food, the rest passes into an enlargement of the gullet, which, when swelled out with honey, is about the size of a pea. When the bag is filled, the insect returns to the hive, and disgorges the contents into one of the six-sided waxen cells which form the comb. The cell, when full, is closed by a thin lid of wax. In taking the honey, after the bees have been stupefied by the fumes of sulphur, a slice is cut off each surface of the comb, so as to unseal the cells; after which it is laid on a sieve, to allow the honey to flow. The honey thus gained is the purest and best flavoured; but a further quantity is procured by pressing the pieces of the comb, which is defiled by the bodies