THE MILK OF THE COW TREE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VI, Issue 310, 28 March 1879, Page 9

THE MILK OF THE COW TREE.

- ■♦ Alexander HtJMr.OLDT remarks that among the many veiy wonderful natural phenomena which he .uad during his extensive travels witnessed none impressed him in a more remarkable degree than the sight of a tree yielding an abundant supply of milk, the properties of which seemed to be the same as the milk of a cow. The adult Indians would go each morning with their slaves from the village or station on the slope of the mountain chain bordering on Venezuela, where Humboldt was stopping, to a forest where they grew, and making some deep incisions into the .trees, in less than t;wo hours their vessels, placed under these incisions, would be full. All present would then partake of the milk, on which the slaves grew fat, and a quantity would be carried home to be given to thecbildren and to be mixed with cafsava and maize. The tree itself attains a height of from 45ft to 60 ft, has long alternates leaves, and was described by Linden as JiroshMim galactoilendron. The milk which flows from any wound made in the trunk is white and somewhat viscid ; the flavour is very agreeable. Some time ago, 1 on the occasion of M. Boussingault going to South America, Humboldt requested him to take every opportunity of investigating this subject. At Maracay the tree was first met with, and fot more than a month its excellent qualities were daily tested in counection t with coffee and chocolate ; but there was no opportunity fora chymical analysis. Nor does such appear to have occurred till the other day' when, amid the many curious things exhibited by the Venezuelan Government at the Paris Exhibition, there happened to be several flasks of this milk, and, after a long period, M. Boussingault has been enabled to complete his analysis of this substance, which is unique in the vegetable world. In a memoir laid before the Academy of France he gives a detailed analysis, and concludes by stating that this vegetable milk most certainly approaches in its composition to the milk of the cow ; it contains not only fatty matter, but also sugar, cascine, and phosphates. But the relative proportion of these substauces is greatly in favour of the vegetable milk, and brings it up to tbe richness of cream, the amount of butter in cream being about the same proportion as the peculiar waxy material found in the vegetable milk, a fact that will readily account for its great nutritive powers. — 2'imcx.