94 THE WONDERS OF VEGETATION. 



number of fruits which frequently count as many as 

 150 or 160. When the tree is stripped of its fruits 

 the stem also is cut down, which prevents the plant 

 from drying up and causes the suckers at its base to 

 grow up more rapidly, providing thus for another 

 harvest six months afterward. The growing plant is 

 aided from time to time by cultivating the soil around 

 it, but this is all, and hence banana plantations usually 

 placed near rivers are easily kept up with very little 

 care. The dressing of bananas for the table is equally 

 simple, as the fruit is cooked either in boiling water, 

 on the oven or among hot ashes. The fibres of the 

 stem are used to manufacture coarse shirts, and the 

 green part is given as food to cattle. The inhabi- 

 tants of the Moluccas subject the leaves to a certain 

 process which enables them to convert them into a 

 kind of linen. 



Weight for weight the banana is inferior to wheat 

 as nutritive food, but much more is produced on the 

 same extent of ground. An acre of land planted in 

 wheat would not yield sufficient to support two per- 

 sons, whereas the same amount of land in the tropics, 

 planted in bananas, would produce food enough for 

 the support of fifty people ! It has been calculated 

 that a strip of land of two hundred square acres is 

 capable of furnishing more than four thousand 

 pounds of nutritive substance ; from which it follows 

 that the produce of this vegetable is to that of wheat 

 sown upon an equal breadth of ground as 133 to 1, 

 and to that of potatoes as 44 to 1. 



In the abundant productions of the tropics we find 



