76 MEALS MEDICINAL. 
toast. Other fanciful condimentary substances have been 
employed with pig-meat, by this, or that “ chef”? :— 
** Yet no man lards his pork with orange peel ; 
Or garnishes his lamb with spitch-cock eel.” 
Art of Cookery. 
A ‘pig’s whisper” is proverbial as of rapid utterance. <‘‘ You'll 
find yourself in bed in something less than a pig’s whisper,”’ 
said Sam Weller. 
BALM (see Heres.) 
BANANA, 
Tue Banana (Musa sapientum), now so popular with us, and 
of such common use as a highly nutritious vegetable product © 
of the plantain tree, especially for children (who eat it with gusto), 
was probably an Hast Indian native fruit. It was cited in the 
sixteenth centnry as dating from Guinea, and is now cultivated 
everywhere throughout the tropics. Bananas have been long 
noted for their efficacy in correcting the fluxes to which 
Europeans are often subject on their first coming into the 
West Indies. An excellent drink is made there from the juice 
oi the ripe fruit when fermented ; likewise a marmalade which 
is esteemed as a pectoral of much worth, and is very refresh- 
ing. Three dozen plantains are sufficient to serve a man 
for a week instead of bread. Unfortunately, however, we 
do not get our imported Bananas in a ripe condition. Like 
most other tropical fruits, these have to be plucked before the 
sun has completed its beneficent work of converting their starch 
within the substance of the Bananas into sugar. Such a ripening 
process can only be carried to perfection whilst the fruit is still 
a part of its parent organism, the living plant. What is termed 
ripening here of the Bananas, after importation, is actually only 
a soitening, and a step towards decay. But few persons realise 
this fact with regard to our fruits in England of every kind. 
Dealers will meet the objection that a certain fruit under sale 
is not ripe, with the assurance, “ Oh, it will ripen in a few days, 
particularly if put in a greenhouse, or in the warm sunshine.” 
It is true that very hard fruit may be made thus to soften, and 
seem mellow ; indeed, it may even need such sun-bakings so as 
to become at all palatable; but the process is not a ripening ; 
fruit thus treated will presently rot, and cannot be stored for 
_ the winter. 
