DE BANANA 223 



prey to potato fungus, Colorado beetles, and a thousand 

 other persistent enemies. It is just the same with the 

 vine propagated too long by layers or cuttings, its health 

 has failed entirely, and it can no longer resist the ravages 

 of the phylloxera or the slow attacks of the vine-disease 

 fungus. But the banana, though of very ancient and 

 positively immemorial antiquity as a cultivated plant, 

 seems somehow gifted with an extraordinary power of 

 holding its own in spite of long-continued unnatural pro- 

 pagation. For thousands of years it has been grown in 

 Asia in the seedless condition, and yet it springs as heartily 

 as ever still from the underground suckers. Nevertheless, 

 there must in the end be some natural limit to this wonder- 

 ful power of reproduction, or rather of longevity ; for, in 

 the strictest sense, the banana bushes that now grow in the 

 negro gardens of Trinidad and Demerara are part and 

 parcel of the very same plants which grew and bore fruit 

 a thousand years ago in the native compounds of the Malay 

 Archipelago. 



In fact, I think there can be but little doubt that the 

 banana is the very oldest product of human tillage. Man, 

 we must remember, is essentially by origin a tropical 

 animal, and wild tropical fruits must necessarily have 

 formed his earliest food-stuffs. It was among them of 

 course that his first experiments in primitive agriculture 

 would be tried ; the little insignificant seeds and berries of 

 cold northern regions would only very slowly be added to 

 his limited stock in husbandry, as circumstances pushed 

 some few outlying colonies northward and ever northward 

 toward the chillier unoccupied regions. Now, of all tropical 

 fruits, the banana is certainly the one that best repays culti- 

 vation. It has been calculated that the same area which will 

 produce thirty-three pounds of wheat or ninety-nine pounds 

 of potatoes will produce 4, 400 pounds of plantains or bananas. 



