THE BANANA AND THK PLANTAIN. 



CHAPTER XIV. 



THE CHIEF ESCULENT PLANTS OF THE TORllID ZONE. 



Eice— Various Aspect of the Rice-fields at different Seasons — The Rice-Bird — 

 Maize — First imported from America by Columbus — Its enormous Productive- 

 ness — Its wide zone of Cultivation — Millet, Dhourra — The Bread-Fruit Tree — 

 The Bananas — Their ancient Cultivation — Avaca or Manilla Hemp — Hum- 

 boldt's Remarks on the Banana — The Traveller's. Tree of Madagascar — The 

 Cassava Root — Tapioca — Yams — Batatas — Arrowroot — Taro — Tropical Fruit 

 Trees — The Chirimoja — The Litchi — The Mangostetn — The Mango. 



OF all the cereals there is none that affords food to so vast a 

 multitude as the rice-plant (Oryza sativa), on whose grains 

 from time immemorial the countless millions of south-eastern 

 Asia chiefly subsist. From its primitive seat, on the Granges 

 or the Sikiang, its cultivation has gradually spread not only 

 over the whole tropical zone, but even far beyond its bounds, 

 as it thrives both in the swamps of South Carolina and in the 

 rich alluvial plains of the Danube and the Po. 



Along the low river banks, in the delta-lands which the rains 

 of the tropics annually change into a boundless lake, or where, 

 by artificial embankments, the waters of the mountain streams 

 liave been collected into tanks for irrigation, the rice-plant 



M 2 



