108 THE TROPICAL WORLD. 



cucumbers. On seeing the stately plant, one miglit suppose 

 that many years liad been required for its growth ; and yet 

 only eight or ten months were necessary for its full develop- 

 ment. 



Each shaft produces its fruit but once, when it withers and 

 dies ; but new shoots spring forth from the root, and, before the 

 year has elapsed, unfold themselves with the same luxuriance. 

 Thus, without any other labour than now and then weeding the 

 field, fruit follows upon fruit, and harvest upon harvest. A 

 single bunch of bananas often weighs from sixty to seventy 

 pounds, and Humboldt has calculated that thirty-three pounds 

 of wheat and ninety-nine pounds of potatoes, require the s^e 

 space of ground to grow upon as will produce 4,000 pounds of 

 bananas. 



This prodigality of Nature, seemingly so favourable to the 

 human race, is however attended with great disadvantages ; for 

 where the life of man is rendered too easy, his best powers 

 remain dormant, and he almost sinks to the level of the plant 

 which affords him subsistence without labour. Exertion 

 awakens our faculties as it increases our enjoyments, and well 

 may we rejoice that wheat and not the banana ripens in our 

 fields. 



As the seeds of the cultivated plantain and banana never or 

 very rarely come to maturity, they can only be propagated by 

 suckers. 'In both hemispheres,' says Humboldt, 'as far as 

 tradition or history reaches, we find plantains cultivated in 

 the tropical zone. It is as certain that African slaves have 

 introduced, in the course of centuries, varieties of the banana 

 into America, as that before the discovery of Columbus the 

 plantain was cultivated by the aboriginal Indians. 



' These plants are the ornaments of humid countries. Like 

 the farinaceous cereals of the north, they accompany man from 

 the first infancy of his civilisation. Semitical traditions place 

 their original home on the banks of the Euphrates ; others, with 

 greater probability, at the foot of the Himalayas. According to 

 the Greek mythology, the plains of Enna were the fortunate 

 birthplace of the cereals; but while the monotonous fields of 

 the latter add but little to the beauty of the northern regions, 

 the tropical husbandman multiplies in the banana one of the 

 noblest forms of vegetable life.' 



