276 



The Journal of Herkditv 



slope) until their jjrogress is arrested by 

 some obstacle; then they take root and 

 reproduce their parent form. 



ANTIQUITY OF ITS CULTURE. 



To sum up, we find the banana estab- 

 lished as an important crop as far back 

 as we can see. Bcccari, indeed, does 

 not hesitate to suggest its cultivation in 

 the Pliocene epoch, although there is 

 by no means agreement of paleon- 

 tologists as to whether Man existed as a 

 distinct species in that epoch. In the 

 Miocene, Bcccari recalls, we find a wide 

 variety of strange forms; in the Pliocene, 

 we meet forms similar to those which 

 we know today. "It is only in the 

 Pliocene that we find forms of mammals 

 identical with those of the present. 

 . . . It is possible that it was in that 

 epoch that man, clearly established as a 

 species with the characteristics he now 

 shows, had begun to domesticate plants 

 and animals," and if so, we must 

 certainly put the cultivation of the 

 banana in that epoch: first, perhaps, as a 

 root crop, and then as a fruit crop, when 

 man seized and perpetuated in the plant 

 the variations favorable to his needs, 

 which chance inter-specific hybridization 

 may have offered. 



From the Indo-Malayan region, ac- 

 cording to the generally received ac- 

 count, man must have carried the 

 banana on his migrations, both cast- 

 ward to the islands of the Pacific 

 Ocean, and perhaps to America; and 

 westward to India, the Mediterranean 

 region, and finally on to America. The 

 plant is admirably adapted for trans- 

 portation over long distances, because 

 its suckers can be dried and carried 

 without difficulty in that condition for 

 several months, to take root at once 

 when placed in the deej), rich soil which 

 they love. 



Of the eastward trax'cls of the banana 

 from the Indo-Malayan region we have 



little knowledge, but its westward 

 tra\-els are interestingly shown by its 

 names, with an occasional written 

 record. 



pliny's description. 



Pliny^ is commonly held to be the 

 first writer to describe the banana, 

 although his account, at second hand, is 

 inaccurate enough to have caused some 

 doubt whether he was describing the 

 banana or not. "There is another tree 

 in India," he writes, "of still larger size, 

 and still more remarkable for the size 

 and sweetness of its fruits, upon which 

 the sages (Brahmins) of India live. The 

 leaf of this tree resembles, in shape, the 

 wing of a bird, being three cubits in 

 length and two in width. It puts forth 

 its fruit from the bark, a fruit remark- 

 able for the sweetness of its juice, a 

 single one containing sufficient to satisfy 

 four persons.* The name of this tree is 

 pala, and of its fruit ariena. They are 

 found in the greatest abundance in the 

 country of the Sydraci, a territory 

 which fonns the extreme limit of the 

 expedition of Alexander." The name 

 pala is said still to be found as a vernac- 

 ular name of the fruit in India, while his 

 remark as to its being the food of the 

 sages has given the specific name to the 

 ordinary cultivated banana — Miisa 

 sapientum, ' 'the Musa of the wise men." 



As to the generic name Musa,' we 

 may conjecture that it represents the 

 name by which the fruit was received 

 in India from its more southerly tropical 

 home. It comes to us from the Sanscrit 

 Mot a, through the Arabic and Latin; a 

 course that prettily illustrates the 

 gradual dispersal of the fruit itself from 

 India through Persia, Arabia, and 

 Svria to the Mediterranean. The old 



Persian form. 



first 

 not 



transition 

 known to 



which represented the 

 from the Sanskrit, is 

 us. It was probably 



^Caius Plinius, Historia Naturalis, XII, 12 (6), Rome, A. D. 67. 



»This can not be taken too literally; yet Stanley (Darkest Africa, I, 252) mentions specimens 

 of plantains 22 in. lonj^, 2,'i2 in- fHameter, nearly 8 in. around. 



»A number of authfirities have given credit to the ridiculous story that the genus was named 

 after Musa, a physician of the Emjjcror Augustus. This etymology is no better than the one 

 put forth by a certain unnamed Franciscan friar who declared "chiamasi questo gentil frutto 

 Musa, percioche le (nine Grecian) Mus? usano tal cibo." As Dottor Nicolo Monardes (Delle 

 Cose che Vengono portate dall' Indie, p. 206. Venetia 1582) justly remarks, "E cosa da muouer 

 le risa." A legend that the banana was the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil of the Garden 

 i n Eden led to the name of Apple of Paradise or Adam's Fig. 



