solid, but fleshy, pure-white, conical rhizome (fibrous with roots 
beneath), and constitute the stem, and they are of so coarse a 
nature, and so full of fibre and air-cells, as to be totally unfit for 
food. But in the centre of this is the axis, formed of the pe- 
duncle or scape, which bears the spadix at the extremity in course 
of time (ten years according to Bruce, three to five years from 
our experience). This is as thick as a man’s arm, pure white, 
as is the sheath formed by the broad bases of the petioles that 
surround it, rises gradually from the rhizome, increases in length, 
bearing large membranaceous close-pressed bracts, and, where it 
emerges from the sheathing leaves, one or two small, foliaceous 
bracts, carrying up with it the later-formed upper leaves with 
the infant spadix. Now it is while the centre, or scape, is 
young and tender, in a state exactly analogous to the “cabbage” 
in Palms and in Cycadaceous plants, etc., that it’is excellent and 
nutritious : as soon as it is mature it turns hard, and is no longer 
eatable. Bruce has given a representation of this scape, stripped 
of its external covering. 
The Ensete appears to be peculiar to Abyssinia, particularly 
abundant in Naree, growing in the great swamps and marshes 
of that country, formed by rivers rising there which have no out- 
let. It comes to great perfection at Gondar, but most abounds 
in that part of Maitsha and Goutto west of the Nile, where 
there are large plantations of it, and is there, almost to the ex- 
clusion of anything else, the food of the Galla inhabiting that 
province. At Maitsha they cannot grow grain, and vegetable 
food would therefore be very scarce were it not for this plant. 
Not only botanically has Bruce discussed this fine plant, but 
historically, as connected with the mythology of Egypt. “We 
see,” he says, “in some of the Egyptian antique statues the 
figure of Isis sitting between the branches (foliage ?) of the Ba- 
nana-tree, as it is supposed, and some handfuls of ears of wheat ; 
you see also the hippopotamus ravaging a quantity of Banana- 
trees. But the (true) Banana is not a plant of the country, and 
could never have entered into the list of their hieroglyphics ; for 
this reason, it could not figure anything permanent or regular in 
the history of Egypt or its climate. I therefore imagine that 
this hieroglyphic was wholly Ethiopian, and that the supposed 
Banana, which, as an adventitious plant, signifies nothing in 
Egypt, was only a representation of the Hzsefe, and that the re- 
cord in the hieroglyphic of Isis and the Hxsete-tree was some- 
thing that happened between harvest and the time the Ensete- 
tree came to be in use, which is in October. The hippopotamus 
is generally thought to represent the Nile, that has been so 
abundant as to be destructive. When, therefore, we see upon 
the obelisks the hippopotamus destroying the Banana, we may 
