Abstract
DURING his tenure of office as Governor of Madras, Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff found time, in a way at which I never ceased to marvel, to correspond with this establishment about every kind of detail connected with the botanical productions of Southern India. In one of the last letters which I received from him at the close of last year, before his departure from India, he writes:—“I send you inclosed in this a portion of that delightful plant Gymnema sylvestre, an Asclepiad. I shall be curious to know whether when it gets to you it retains the very interesting property that, if you chew carefully two or three leaves of it, it absolutely abolishes for the time the power of tasting sugar. This is no fable, for three of us, I being one, tried it this morning at breakfast with the most complete success. I ate pounded sugar after it without the faintest perception of its saccharine character. I also drank coffee without any sugar in it, and tasted it just as well as I ever did.
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