334 Trayisactions. — Botany. 



crops" ^Yere only annually raised and preserved through an 

 immense amount of close attention and labour, and all done 

 without the use of iron or any other metal. It is only when 

 man has outgrown, or abandoned, the roaming, ever-changing 

 life of a hunter, and has defined and settled his habitation, 

 that he can become a real and loving cultivator of the soil. 



2. That the beginnings of all such cultivation of food-crops, 

 especially when the plants themselves are not indigenous to 

 the countries in which they were anciently cultivated, is lost, 

 far back in the night of history ; hence, too, all particular 

 mention of their introduction is always surrounded by marvel- 

 lous legendary and mythical lore — a further proof, I may, I 

 think, rightly consider of their high antiquity. And this is 

 eminently seen in the ancient traditions among the Aztecs 

 and other original American races, of how they first received 

 some of their prized cultivated plants ; in those also of the 

 ancient Greeks respecting their first receiving wheat from 

 Ceres, Isis, and Triptolemus ; and those still more roman- 

 tically mythical ones of the Maoris concerning their prized 

 kumara ; while those of the origins of their taro and hue and 

 aute plants! are utterly unknown. 



As on the former occasion (above mentioned by me), so now, 

 two of the plants I purpose bringing before you this evening 

 were cultivated by those ancient Mexicans ; these are the 

 banana, so well known here among us as an esteemed and 

 wholesome article of food, and the vanilla, almost equally 

 well known for its sweet scent and flavouring uses, though 

 neither of them are grown in this colony. And I think I shall 

 be able to give you some very interesting, if not astonishing, 

 particulars respecting both plants. 



1. Of the Banana, or Plantain {Musa sapientium et M. para- 

 disiaca, Linn. ; Musa sapientium, Br.). 

 This plant is peculiar in many respects : — 



1. From having been found in both the Old and New 

 World. 



2. From its antiquity, being mentioned in our oldest books ; 

 as by Pliny, who relates it having been found by Alexander in 

 his Indian expedition in the greatest abundance in the country 

 of the Sydraci, and that it was remarkable for the size and 

 sweetness of its fruit, upon which the sages j; of India live. 



* Cook says, " These plantations were of different extent, from 1 or 2 

 acres to 10 ; taken together, from 150 to 200 acres in cultivation in the 

 whole bay" — Tolaga Bay — "though we never saw there an hundred 

 people. Each lot was fenced in — so closely done that there was scarcely 

 room for a mouse to creep between." — "Voyages," vol. ii., p. 313. 



t Kumava. — Ipomcpa clirysorhlza, Forst. ; taro = Colocasia antiq^uoruni, 

 Schott. ; \\\xe=Ciicurbita sp. ; cinte = Broiissonetia papyrifcra, Vent. 



\ Gymnosophists or Bi-ahmins. — Hist., lib. xii., cap. 12 (6). 



