216 DE BANANA 



DE BANANA 



THE title which heads this paper is intended to be Latin, 

 and is modelled on the precedent of the De Amicitia, De 

 Senectute, De Corona, and other time-honoured plagues of 

 our innocent boyhood. It is meant to give dignity and 

 authority to the subject with which it deals, as well as to 

 rouse curiosity in the ingenuous breast of the candid 

 reader, who may perhaps mistake it, at first sight, for negro- 

 English, or for the name of a distinguished Norman 

 family. In anticipation of the possible objection that the 

 word ' Banana ' is not strictly classical, I would humbly 

 urge the precept and example of my old friend Horace 

 enemy I once thought him who expresses his appro- 

 bation of those happy innovations whereby Latium was 

 gradually enriched with a copious vocabulary. I main- 

 tain that if Banana, bananse, &c., is not already a Latin 

 noun of the first declension, why then it ought to be, and 

 it shall be in future. Linnaeus indeed thought otherwise. 

 He too assigned the plant and fruit to thefirst declension, but 

 handed it over to none other than our earliest acquaintance 

 in the Latin language, Musa. He called the banana Musa 

 sapientum. What connection he could possibly conceive 

 between that woolly fruit and the daughters of the asgis- 

 bearing Zeus, or why he should consider it a proof of 

 wisdom to eat a particularly indigestible and nightmare- 

 begetting food-stuff, passes my humble comprehension. 



