THE STORAGE OF FOOD-RESERVES 149 



dates, pineapples, mulberries, melons, cucumbers, and 

 marrows. 



The Banana (Musa Sapientum) is one of the most prolific 

 of food-plants. A single cluster may contain as many as 

 160 to 180 fruits and weigh 80 pounds. It is propagated 

 by suckers arising from the base of the stem, and a new 

 sprout will begin to bear fruit in three months. The 

 tree grows in the wet forest-regions of the Tropics, and 

 supplies food all the year round. With its leaves the 

 savage thatches his hut, and when he moves his home- 

 stead, burns out a new clearing, plants his suckers, and 

 waits for Nature to do the rest. The food per acre 

 obtained from the chief food- products cultivated by 

 man is : 



Pounds per Acre. 



Sago-palm . . . . . . . . . . 292,320 



Banana . . . . . . . . . . 242,000 



Potato .. .. .. .. .'. 4,000 



Wheat .. .. .. .. .. 2,000 



Many fruits provide food for birds, but not for man. 

 They are either insipid, nauseous, noxious, or poisonous 

 e.g., the hips of roses (sometimes made into jam), haws 

 of hawthorn, berries of the black and white bryony, 

 nightshade, mistletoe, privet, elder, mountain- ash, straw- 

 berry-tree, arum, etc. 



By cultivation man has considerably improved many 

 of his fleshy fruits, the succulent and juicy tissues being 

 developed at the expense of the harder parts intended by 

 Nature for the protection of the seeds. Most of the more 

 specialized fruits are propagated vegetatively by cuttings, 

 grafts, suckers, etc., in order that the qualities of the 

 parent may be preserved in the fruit. So long and so 

 extensively has this been practised, that in some cases the 

 efficiency of the seeds has been diminished to such an 

 extent that they have become sterile. Apples, pears, and 

 plums are seldom raised from seed, the existing varieties 

 being chiefly the outcome of careful selection during many 

 generations without the intervention of seed. Other food- 

 plants have suffered in the same way. The " seed " pota- 

 toes of the gardener are not seeds, but specially selected 

 tubers ; it is only with difficulty that potatoes can be 

 raised from seed at all. In the banana the seeds are quite 

 useless, while the seed of the sugar-cane is almost unknown . 



