DE BANANA 217 



The muses, so far as I have personally noticed their habits, 

 always greatly prefer the grape to the banana, and wise men 

 shun the one at least as sedulously as they avoid the other. 

 Let it not for a moment be supposed, however, that I 

 wish to treat the useful and ornamental banana with in- 

 tentional disrespect. On the contrary, I cherish for it 

 at a distance feelings of the highest esteem and admiration. 

 We are so parochial in our views, taking us as a species, 

 that I dare say very few English people really know how 

 immensely useful a plant is the common banana. To most 

 of us it envisages itself merely as a curious tropical fruit, 

 largely imported at Covent Garden, and a capital thing to 

 stick on one of the tall dessert-dishes when you give a dinner- 

 party, because it looks delightfully foreign, and just serves 

 to balance the pine-apple at the opposite end of the hos- 

 pitable mahogany. Perhaps such innocent readers will be 

 surprised to learn that bananas and plantains supply the 

 principal food-stuff of a far larger fraction of the human 

 race than that which is supported by wheaten bread. They 

 form the veritable staff of life to the inhabitants of both 

 eastern and western tropics. What the potato is to the 

 degenerate descendant of Celtic kings ; what the oat is 

 to the kilted Highlandman ; what rice is to the Bengalee, 

 and Indian corn to the American negro, that is the muse 

 of sages (I translate literally from the immortal Swede) to 

 African savages and Brazilian slaves. Humboldt calcu- 

 lated that an acre of bananas would supply a greater 

 quantity of solid food to hungry humanity than could 

 possibly be extracted from the same extent of cultivated 

 ground by any other known plant. So you see the question 

 is no small one ; to sing the praise of this Linneean muse 

 is a task well worthy of the Pierian muses. 



Do you know the outer look and aspect of the banana 

 plant ? If not, then you have never voyaged to those 



