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-7-
cassava is important. It will take many more trips, at various periods
during the growing cycle of the plants in order to have good material to
study.

Very recently it has been shown that the tops of the plant are valuable
as sources of proteins, and as such may be used either fresh for human consumption or dried and ground as a meal for cattle. For many years, natives
of Africa and Australia have eaten the young green foliage as a vegetable,
but curiously enough this is little if at all practised in the New World.
Tests in Central America have shown that cattle produce nearly as much
milk from a diet of meal from dried yucca leaves and stems as from the best
known source of protein, alfalfa. Alfalfa has so far been a failure as far
as growth in the tropics is concerned. Similarly, products from one part or
another of the cassava plant have been found to be satisfactory food for
horses, hogs and chickens. Other valuable uses of the plant including production of alcohol, lactic acid, paper pulp, and sauces show that in Manihot
utilissima we have one of the most versatile of crops, and one whose full
value has not been appreciated.

Bibliography
(1) Seuer, Carl O., 1950, Cultivated Plants of South and Central America,
in Handbook of South American Indians, Bull. 143, Vol. 8, Bur. Am.
Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution.
(2) Pynaert, L., 1951, Le Menio, Publications de la Direction de L'Agriculture,
Bruxelles.
(3) 1949, Congres du Menio, Institut Colonial de Marseille.