orse. They have a song in
praise of this root, which I have once or twice heard chanted on
occasions of festivals, by a troop of young women who carry baskets of
the food intended for the guests."--("Shortland's New Zealand.")

I ought not to omit noticing the _Tuber cibarium_, a plant of the
mushroom family, growing under ground, which furnishes the famous
truffle, so celebrated in the annals of cooking, of which immense
quantities are imported, chiefly from the South of France. It is
common also in Italy and Germany, and is often found in
Northamptonshire, and some other of our own counties. The "kemmayes,"
a desert plant of the truffle kind, is a great favorite with the
Arabs.

In Terra del Fuego the only vegetable food of the natives, besides a
few berries of a dwarf arbutus, is a species of globular bright yellow
fungus (_Cyttaria Darwinii_), which grows in vast numbers on the beech
trees. In its tough and mature state it is collected in large
quantities by the women and children, and eaten uncooked. It has a
slightly sweet mucilaginous taste, with a faint smell like that of a
mushroom.

SECTION III.

SPICES, AROMATIC CONDIMENTS, FRAGRANT WOODS, &c.

The various spices and condiments which form so large an item in our
commercial imports, are obtained from the barks, the dried seeds, the
fruit, flower-buds, and root-stocks, of different plants. The chief
aromatic barks comprise the cinnamon, cassia lignea, cascarilla, and
canella alba. The medicinal barks will be noticed elsewhere. The seeds
and fruits include pepper, pimento, cardamoms, anise, nutmegs,
chillies. The flower-buds of some furnish cloves and cassia buds; the
roots supply ginger, galangale, turmeric, and ginseng. A few other
useful substances, such as vanilla, the costus, or putchuk, mace, soy,
and some of the odoriferous woods I have included under this section.

CINNAMON.

The true cinnamon of commerce is obtained from the inner bark of
_Cinnamonum verum_, R. Brown; or _C. zeylanicum_; the _Laurus
cinnamonum_, of Linnaeus, a handsome looking tree, native of the East
Indies. The island of Ceylon is the chief seat of its cultivation, and
for a long time the Dutch depended solely for their supply of this
bark for the home market on the produce of the wild cinnamon trees in
the King of Kandy's territories there. At last, from the increasing
demand, they resorted to the growth and more careful culture of the
tree themselves. About the y