i PEIMITIVE TILLEKS OF THE GEOUND 7 



bread is the most important part of our food so 

 that we speak of " our daily bread " when we mean 

 food so the banana forms the most important part 

 of their food. One of the missionaries tells us that 

 when the natives were told that bananas do not 

 grow in England, they said at once : " Then you 

 have come to our country to get our bananas." They 

 could not think of life without bananas any more 

 than we could think of life without bread. The 

 banana is almost everything to them. They eat 

 the fruit, either raw or cooked ; they use the leaves 

 to wrap the fruit in while it is being cooked, and 

 for many other purposes ; they use the stem as 

 manure and also the soft inside part as sponge and 

 soap combined. There is no end to the uses to 

 which the plant may be put. 



How do they get their bananas ? The answer 

 is that they grow them in vast plantations or 

 groves, the plantations having to be looked after 

 very carefully. Where the banana came from 

 originally is a more difficult question. Some 

 bananas grow wild in Africa, and it is possible 

 that long, long ago some wise person began to 

 cultivate the wild banana, and took such good care 

 of it in his garden that it lost its seeds and became 

 the plump, seedless, nourishing banana of to-day. 

 It is more likely, however, that it was not in 

 Africa but in Asia that the banana was first 



