174 CHIEF NUTRITIVE PLANTS OF THE TORRID ZONE 



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. 



The esculent musacese are cultivated throughout the whole 

 tropical zone in many varieties. The Hindoo and the Malay, 

 the Negro and the South Sea Islander, enjoy their fruits, and 

 the cool shade of their colossal leaves. In the Society Islands, 

 the Marquesas, and the Sandwich group, a species of pisang, 

 with upright fruit-stalks, grows wild in the mountains. In the 

 deep ravines, protected from the wind, it forms thick groves, 

 whose succulent foliage forms a picturesque contrast to the wild 

 character of the surrounding highland vegetation. 



As the seeds of the cultivated plantain and banana never or very 

 rarely ripen, 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 

 centmries, varieties of the banana into America, as that before the 

 discovery of Columbus the pisang 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 Himalaya. According 

 to the Grreek 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 by his pisang plantations one of 

 the most magnificent forms of vegetable life." 



The fruits of the musacese are used in various ways — boiled, 

 roasted, raw, dried and converted into meal — so that the mul- 

 tiplicity of their preparations vies with that of rice or maize. 



These beneficial plants are not only useful to man by their 

 mealy, wholesome, and agreeable fruits, but also by the fibres of 

 their long leaf-stalks. Some species furnish filaments for the 



