The Editor: Origin of the Banana 



277 





A "HAND" OF WILD BANANAS 



Although the seeds are numerous and fully developed, they are much fewer in proportion 

 to the amount of pulp than in the African species shown in the frontispiece. This fruit 

 is from Cavite, Philippine Islands, where it is colloquially known as Alinsanay. Botan- 

 ically, it is probably an undescribed species. On Beccari's hypothesis, it is to be regarded 

 as a once cultivated form, that escaped from cultivation long ago and has regained fertile 

 seeds through cross-pollination with some distantly related type. Photograph from the 

 Bureau of Agriculture. P. I. (Fig. 17.) 



taken from Persia by the Aramaic, whose 

 form for it wotdd have been Moza, and 

 the Arabs borrowed it from the latter 

 language, as Mauz or Muz. It was 

 spelled Musa by the Romans, and one 

 or the other of these two forms — Muz 

 and Musa — was the accepted English 

 name until comparatively recent times. '° 

 In 1578, for instance, Lyte writes in the 

 Dodoens (VI, 38, 704) "of musa or mose 

 tree. The Mose tree leaves be so great 

 and large that one may easily wrap a 



childe in them." Sixteenth century 

 writers commonly call the fruit Apples 

 of Paradise or Adam's Fig. The name 

 banana gradually came into use in that 

 century ; it is the vernacular name given 

 to the fruit by a tribe in the African 

 Kongo. De Orta mentions it in 1563, 

 while Hartwell (Pigafetta's Congo 

 (1597) in Coll. Travels (1746) II, 553), 

 says, "Other fruits there are, termed 

 Banana, which we verily think to be the 

 Muses of Egypt and Suria." 



'"C. C. Torrey, professor of Semitic languages at Yale University, kindly aided me in tracing 

 the travels of this word. 



