212 Miscellaneous . 



' Monograph of the British Desmidieoi' either in microscopical ob- 

 servation, by faithful outlines, or in the determination of any diffi- 

 cult point. 



Mr. Hassall also is a gentleman whom I respect, and for most of 

 my knowledge of the British Conjugates I am indebted to his kind- 

 ness. I am, Gentlemen, your obedient servant, 

 ^^^ Edward Jenner. 



On the Disease of the Plantain. By George R. Bonyun, M.D. 

 Communicated by W. H. Campbell, Esq., LL.D., Secretary of the 

 Royal Agricultural and Commercial Society of British Guiana. 



The varieties of the edible plantain, which are known and culti- 

 vated throughout the West Indies, Africa and the East, are all of 

 them reducible to two species, viz. the plantain and the banana (Musa 

 paradisiaca and Musa sapientum). The difference between these two 

 plants is even so slight as to be scarcely specific ; it is therefore most 

 probable that there was originally but one stock, from which they 

 have by cultivation and change of locality been derived. It is there- 

 fore necessary to determine with exactness, if possible, whether the 

 plantain or banana (whichever be the parent stock) exists anywhere 

 at present, or has been known to have existed as a perfect plant, that 

 is, bearing fertile seeds, or whether it has always been in the imper- 

 fect state, that is, incapable of being procreated by seed, the only 

 state in which it exists in this colony. 



In the oldest botanical descriptions of the plantain, bakova, pisang, 

 banana, bihai, or by whatever name it is known, it is invariably de- 

 scribed as an anomalous plant not perfecting its seeds ; nor is there 

 any traveller who has described a plant which could be considered to 

 be the plantain in its uncultivated state. 



In Gerard's 'Herbal,' printed in 1636, p. 1464, there is an excel- 

 lent drawing of a bunch of plantains, and it is described as seedless. 

 Plumier, in his * Nova Plantarum American arum Genera,' printed in 

 1703, gives a like description of the plantain. Linnaeus, in his ' Spe- 

 cies Plantarum,' anno 1763, describes four sipecies, Musa paradisiaca, 

 sapientum, Bihai and Troglodytarum, which latter, on the authority 

 of Rumphius, he says, bears many seeds (hcec gerit semina multa). 

 He supposes the two former to be hybrids produced by impregnating 

 the Bihai with some congeners unknown to him. Since Linnseus's 

 time the "Bihai" has been found to belong to a different genus 

 than Musa ; it is now called Heliconia humilis, is a native of South 

 America, and produces fertile seeds. Whether Linnaeus be right in 

 his conjecture that the Bihai is the stock-plant of the plantain, it is 

 almost impossible to ascertain ; but the absence of any description 

 of a wild seed-bearing plantain renders it highly probable that the 

 cultivated species are hybrids produced long ago. The banana, from 

 time immemorial, has been the food of the philosophers and sages of 

 the East ; and almost all travellers throughout the tropics have de- 

 scribed these plants exactly as they are known to us, either as a 

 sweet fruit eaten raw, or a farinaceous vegetable roasted or boiled. 



