PLANTS. 345 



attains the size of a common cucumber. After ten or 

 eleven months, this fruit is what is called tree-ripe, con- 

 tains a mealy pulp, in the middle of which is a slender 

 column surrounded with very small seeds ; the rind is at 

 this time green. When fully matured, which is not until 

 ten or twenty days afterwards, the rind turns yellow, 

 and the pulp becomes sweet and glutinous. There are 

 now two kinds of fruit to be found on the same tuft ; 

 the larger fruit, of which there are fewer, viz., the stam- 

 inate or male fruit, and the pistillate, or that produced 

 by the female flower ; the former are the best. In the 

 tree-ripe state bananas are good and wholesome articles 

 of food, are used boiled or roasted, and taste like a mix- 

 ture of corn meal and potatoes ; when fully ripe, they 

 are eaten as fruit. In South America the banana forms 

 the chief article of food for the negroes. The tree after 

 producing such a crop of fruit, often forty to sixty 

 pounds, is altogether exhausted, therefore the usual prac- 

 tice is to cut the top off and turn the remaining portion 

 downwards, so that new scions may spring up from the 

 root to maintain the stock. The .acerb sap being pressed 

 from the leaves and seeds, the fibrous portion which re- 

 mains serves to be manufactured into cordage and a kind 

 of rough paper. This genus, known by the various 

 names of Pisang, Plaintain, and Paradise Fig, is native 

 of the East Indies, now, however, found throughout the 

 torrid zone ; was known to the ancients by the name of 

 Pala. Many believe the banana (paradise fig) to have 

 been the tree by whose fruit Eve was tempted ; others, 

 with more probability, suppose that the great clusters, 

 brought by the Jewish spies from the Valley of Eschol, 

 which were so heavy that it required two men to carry 

 15* 



