486 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



showy accomplisliments to girls in the harem. Already the 

 invalid has begun to help himself by free schools and public 

 libraries, which must inevitably, in time, revolutionize public 

 thought. Even if the germ of the desire for freedom has, as 

 Adalet confesses, entered woman's views in its least desirable 

 form, it is something to have the love of freedom reawakened at 

 the source whence youth draws its first impressions ; and, after 

 the desire for freedom for what it can give to the woman her- 

 self, must surely follow a desire for that which will enable 

 her to give most worthily to others. 



WHERE BANANAS GROW. 



By JAMES ELLIS HUMPPIREY. 



IN spite of the fact that a bunch of bananas was a rare sight, 

 and a single one a luxury, when we who are still young were 

 children, they have become so common that we have ceased to 

 ask the questions naturally prompted by unaccustomed sights ; 

 and this, not because those questions are no longer unanswered, 

 but as the result of that familiarity which makes us forget our 

 ignorance. We know that we owe this acceptable addition to our 

 bill of fare to the tropics. We admire its texture and enjoy its 

 flavor; but we rarely give it serious thought unless constrained 

 to do so while yielding to the smooth invitation to tarry a while 

 that its cast-off skin extends. We shudder at dreadful stories of 

 venomous tarantulas and scorpions lurking in those compact clus- 

 ters ; and the horrors of a region that harbors such creatures out- 

 weigh all other thoughts. Concerning the facts of its climate, 

 the growth of its products, the life of its people, we rarely 

 inquire. 



There is, perhaps, no other temperate country where the use of 

 fruit is so widespread or so extensive as in the United States. Not 

 only does our own unrivaled domain furnish varied soils and cli- 

 mates perfectly adapted to the temperate and subtropical fruits of 

 the world, but our facilities for transporting and preserving them 

 place the products of the most favored regions within reach of 

 every one during prolonged seasons. The dweller in New York 

 or Boston is thus able to supplement his home fruits by those of 

 Delaware and New Jersey, of the Indian River, and of Los An- 

 geles and San Bernardino in an uninterrupted and unfailing suc- 

 cession which has nearly banished the dried apple of our child- 

 hood. 



But the influence of external conditions is as potent here as in 

 other features of our life, and the nature of the food supply 



