PULSE.

Kachang is a term applied to all sorts of pulse, of which a great variety is cultivated; as the kachang china (Dolichos sinensis), kachang putih (Dolichos katjang), k. ka-karah (D. lignosus), k. kechil (Phaseolus radiatus), k. ka-karah gatal (Dolichos pruriens) and many others.  The kachang tanah (Arachis hypogaea) is of a different class, being the granulose roots (or, according to some, the self-buried pods) of a herb with a yellow, papilionaceous flower, the leaves of which have some resemblance to the clover, but double only, and, like it, affords rice pasture for cattle.  The seeds are always eaten fried or parched, from whence they obtain their common appellation of kachang goring.

YAMS.

The variety of roots of the yam and potato kind, under the general name of ubi, is almost endless; the dioscorea being generally termed ubi kechil (small), and the convolvulus ubi gadang (large); some of which latter, of the sort called at Bencoolen the China-yam, weigh as much as forty pounds, and are distinguished into the white and the purple.  The fruit of the trong (melongena), of which the egg-plant is one species, is much eaten by the natives, split and fried.  They are commonly known by the name of brinjals, from the beringelhas of the Portuguese.

DYE-STUFFS.

(PLATE 8.  Marsdenia tinctoria, OR BROAD-LEAFED INDIGO. 
E.W.  Marsden delt.  Swaine fct. 
Published by W. Marsden, 1810.)

INDIGO.

Tarum or indigo (Indigofera tinctoria) being the principal dye-stuff they employ, the shrub is always found in their planted spots; but they do not manufacture it into a solid substance, as is the practice elsewhere.  The stalks and branches having lain for some days in water to soak and macerate, they then boil it, and work among it with their hands a small quantity of chunam (quick lime, from shells), with leaves of the paku sabba (a species of fern) for fixing the colour.  It is afterwards drained off, and made use of in the liquid state.

There is another kind of indigo, called in Sumatra tarum akar, which appears to be peculiar to that country, and was totally unknown to botanists to whom I showed the leaves upon my return to England in the beginning of the year 1780.  The common kind is known to have small pinnated leaves growing on stalks imperfectly ligneous.  This, on the contrary, is a vine, or climbing plant, with leaves from three to five inches in length, thin, of a dark green, and in the dried state discoloured with blue stains.  It yields the same dye as the former sort; they are prepared also in the same manner, and used indiscriminately, no preference being given to the one above the other, as the natives informed me, excepting inasmuch as the tarum akar, by reason of the largeness of the foliage, yields a greater proportion of sediment.  Conceiving it might prove a valuable plant in our colonies,