We have passed in review the bread-stuffs used in Europe and America, but there remains a very important class of bread-making material very little known to us, but affording nourishment to many thousands in some of our Colonies.

Those who visited the West Indian court of the Colonial and Indian Exhibition - and especially that part devoted to British Guiana - must have noticed a number of flat white cakes hung up in nets and labelled Cassava Bread, but the greater number of those who saw probably went away as wise as before. They might also have seen, in this same court, glass jars filled with a white substance, cut in thin slices, and labelled sweet and bitter cassava, and, at the entrance, they might probably have been attracted by the figure of an Indian woman, with a child on her back, sitting on a piece of wood attached to a very curiously-shaped long basket, but, unless they had lived in the West Indies, it would never have occurred to them to connect this basket and the woman with bread-making in any form; yet this basket forms an important adjunct to the art of bread-making in the West Indies, for the cassava is the root of a plant known as Jatropha manihot, or, shortly, manioc, which when fresh is a deadly poison, but when properly prepared is an excellent and very nourishing food. The mode of preparation is to take the root and rasp it on tin or wooden graters : the raspings are then placed in the long plaited basket, which is hung to a tree, and drawn down by means of a weight attached to a pole at the bottom. Sometimes, as represented at the Exhibition, a woman sits on the pole to drag the basket out to its full extent, thus squeezing all the juice from the rasped root, which, when sufficiently squeezed, is emptied out on raw hides and dried in the sun. It is then baked on smooth plates made of clay. The coarse flour is spread out quite dry on the hot plates, and made into very thin, flat, round cakes by the women, who turn it very dexterously by means of two pieces of split cane. When baked it will keep any length of time. The starch precipitated from the poisonous juice of the manioc forms that excellent and nutritious food known as tapioca, and the dried root itself is also eaten, and is very excellent food, so that in nothing is the old adage that 'one man's meat is another man's poison' better exemplified than in this plant Jatropha manihot, for whilst it supplies good and wholesome food for thousands, the extracted juice is so poisonous that it was used by the Indians to poison their enemies the Spaniards, and it is said to cause death in a few minutes. Nevertheless, not only is the prepared root eaten with impunity and used in making several fermented liquors, but the leaves also are boiled and eaten.

Cassava or manioc, prepared in the same way - that is, by extracting the poisonous juice - is used as food not only in the West Indies, but in West Africa, Madagascar, and many of the South Sea Islands, but it is being gradually superseded by maize and wheat, although it seems a pity that it should be thus superseded, for we are told that an acre planted with Jatropha manihot will yield nourishment to more people than six acres planted with wheat.

It is a curious fact that not only manioc, but other roots of a poisonous nature, have been used for food by uncivilised peoples from time immemorial, and it must have required a considerable amount of thought and observation to enable men in such a low state of culture to convert such plants into wholesome food. The root of the Arum lily is one of the plants thus utilised, and we must not forget that the potato, now so universally eaten and esteemed, belongs to the most poisonous order of plants, being cousin-german to the deadly nightshade.

Maize may be regarded as the connecting link between cereals used for bread-making, and roots like the arum and manioc, since like these it becomes more palatable by being steeped in water to precipitate the starch, and using this for baking or boiling, instead of simply pounding or grinding the grain and mixing the flour with water, as is done with wheat, barley, oats, and rye.

The Italians use maize in large quantities to make that which seems the chief food of the poor, and is known as polenda, being a kind of porridge of ground Indian corn, and you can scarcely enter a cottage without seeing the padrona stirring the rich yellow mess destined for the family meal, which is always slowly simmering in a huge brass vessel hung over the charcoal fire in the common apartment. Sometimes this porridge is made of chestnuts, and is then known as polenda dolce.

There was a grain formerly much cultivated in Cornwall which is said to have made excellent porridge, and with potatoes a splendid food for pigs and poultry; this is a kind of oat (avena nuda) known locally as pilez or pellas, which grows readily in black moorland moist soils, and which might probably be grown advantageously in Ireland, for it is said that a gallon of ground pilez, mixed with twenty gallons of potatoes, makes an excellent fattening food for pigs and poultry; whilst the straw, which is very fine, is capital fodder for cattle and horses.

Rice, which may be reckoned as one of the most important of the cereals, is not used for making bread, although the grain boiled, or ground and mixed with other materials, forms an excellent food.

It is the fashion of the present day to ignore or deny the value of rice as an article of food, and it is, perhaps, true that its nutritive properties are less than those of other cereals; nevertheless, it affords support to untold millions of Asiatics, forming the principal food of the natives of India, China, Japan, and many other countries; whilst in Europe, Africa, and America - in fact, in the whole civilised world - no store closet would be complete without a bag of rice for use in curries, puddings, cakes, and a variety of dishes too numerous to mention. In fact, this cereal - notwithstanding the dictum of doctors and analytical chemists - seems to enter more largely into our cookery books than any of the others, with the exception of wheat, which, in the form of flour, is now a prime necessary of civilised life.