288 Fruits and Fruit- Trees. 



poor, and this all the year round. Literally "yielding 

 her fruit every month," no wonder that the plant got 

 its Latin appellation of Paradisiaca, the " City " of the 

 Apocalypse being the renewal of the Garden of Eden. 

 The garden and the city are everywhere the scene and 

 the emblems of human progress, which begins in the one, 

 is completed in the other. The people who find their 

 staple in the banana, are not to be congratulated, though 

 it comes in profusion so vast, and without labour. Civili- 

 zation demands the tilling of the ground, digging, sowing, 

 reaping, baking bread. 



Tropical Asia was the original home of the banana. 

 Now it is in every country where the temperature will 

 allow. No Indian fruit ripens more readily in Britain, 

 enabling those who cultivate it with success to judge of 

 the natural flavour, imported bananas being only what 

 crabs are to golden pippins. There are many varieties. 

 The best for the English hothouse is the Chinese Musa 

 Cavendtshii, which grows only six feet high and will 

 thrive and fruit in a vinery. Another species, the Musa 

 sapientum, distinguished by having the stem striped and 

 spotted with purple, also bears excellent fruit, rounder 

 and more plump than that of the Paradisiaca, and this, 

 in truth, would seem to be the veritable banana, the 

 produce of the Paradisiaca being more properly the 

 " plantain." The Abyssinian Musa Ensete, the rosea, the 

 coccinea, and others of this splendid genus, are valuable 

 only as decorative plants. 



