822 MEETING OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 
trouble and expense, to our West India Islands, but with little advan- 
tage. In the wild state the plant exists in the islands of the Malay 
archipelago, where, however, the immemorial possession of the cereals 
seems to have superseded the necessity of cultivating it. 
Some species of the Musa, or Banana, which yield a large portion of 
farinaceous matter, are, either in their fresh or dry state, extensively 
used in the warm parts of America as bread, but, as far as I know, 
never so in any Asiatic country; and Baron Humboldt generalizes 
rashly when he asserts that in all tropical countries the Banana takes 
the place of the cereals of temperate and subtropical regions. 
Sago, or more correctly Sagu, is the name of the pith of several 
Palms, natives of the Malayan and Philippine archipelagoes. The 
most productive of these Palms is the Sagus Rumphii, or Metoxylon 
Sagus. This and other species of the same genus have the peculiarity 
among Palms of propagating themselves both by lateral shoots and by 
seeds. They thrive only in bogs within the air of the sea, but ex- 
cluding tidal action. A plantation once made perpetuates itself inter- 
minably. A sago palm acquires maturity in about fifteen years. The 
stem is a mere case containing an immense mass of medulla or pith, 
which, when freed from fibrous matter, is a starch which, dried and 
granulated, or subjected to heat in earthen moulds, forms the bread of 
all the people of the Malay archipelago east of Celebes, as far as New 
Guinea inclusive. It is consumed also in Sumatra, Borneo, and even 
Mindanao, the most westerly of the Philippines; but in these places, 
where the cereals have long existed, sago is the bread only of the poor, 
or of xcd tribes. 
often throws light on the birthplace and migration of 
iind plants; and I therefore proceed to offer such remarks as 
have occurred to me regarding those which I have now been referring 
to. To begin with the cereals, it will be found that they bear different 
names in every separate and independent language, or sisterhood of 
languages. In so far as philology can be considered evidence, this 
fact would seem to show, not that the culture of the cereals had origi- 
nated at a single point, from which they were in course of time widely 
disseminated, but at many separate and independent points, foreign 
names only Rte them in the few instances in which they are 
exoties. Thus the English name for wheat is essentially the same in 
all the Teutonic — In Irish and Welsh, which are two dis- 
