[1] Cf. notes to ℞ Nos. 74, 172, 216, 244; also the copious explanations by Humelberg, fol. III. [2] Tor. who is trying hard to explain the _colocasium_. His name, "Egyptian Bean" may be due to the mealiness and bean-like texture of the _colocasium_ tuber; otherwise there is no resemblance to a bean, except, perhaps, the seed pod which is not used for food. This simile has led other commentators to believe that the _colocasium_ in reality was a bean. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has in recent years imported various specimens of that taro species (belonging to the _colocasia_), and the plants are now successfully being farmed in the southern parts of the United States, with fair prospects of becoming an important article of daily diet. The Department has favored us repeatedly with samples of the taro, or dasheen, (_Colocasium Antiquorum_) and we have made many different experiments with this agreeable, delightful and important "new" vegetable. It can be prepared in every way like a potato, and possesses advantages over the potato as far as value of nutrition, flavor, culture and keeping qualities are concerned. As a commercial article, it is not any more expensive than any good kind of potato. It grows where the potato will not thrive, and vice versa. It thus saves much in freight to parts where the potato does not grow. The ancient _colocasium_ is no doubt a close relative of the modern dasheen or taro. The Apician _colocasium_ was perhaps very similar to the ordinary Elephant-Ear, _colocasium Antiquorum Schott_, often called _caladium esculentum_, or _tanyah_, more recently called the "Dasheen" which is a corruption of the French "de Chine"--from China--indicating the supposed origin of this variety of taro. The dasheen is a broad-leaved member of the _arum_ family. The name dasheen originated in the West Indies whence it was imported into the United States around 1910, and the name is now officially adopted. Mark Catesby, in his Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands, London, 1781, describes briefly under the name of _arum maximum Aegypticum_ a plant which was doubtless one of the tanyahs or taros. He says: "This was a welcome improvement among the negroes and was esteemed a blessing; they being delighted with all their African food, particularly this, which a great part of Africa subsists much on." Torinus, groping for the right name, calls it variously _colosium_, _coledium_, _coloesium_, till he finally gets it right, _colocasium_.