346 NATURAL HISTORY. 



one, were not grapes, but the clustered fruit of the 

 banana. There are many varieties known at present. 



The Bakuba (M. paradisica), bearing a small fruit of 

 about a finger's length and proportionate thickness, left 

 to ripen fully, is very pleasant-tasted, resembling a ber- 

 gamot pear, but is a much finer fruit. The superior 

 variety of Bakubas contain no seed. O. 



SIXTY-SIXTH FAMILY. PALM^:. PALM. The most 

 majestic race of plants. Palrns are scarcely ever found 

 beyond the limits of the tropics, where they not only de- 

 light the eye with the beauty of their structure, but re- 

 fresh the weary wanderer with their fruit. The young 

 shoots are used as articles of every day diet, and the 

 pulpy pith of some eatable is appropriated to various 

 uses. Seldom found growing in numbers together so as 

 to form a grove ; when they do their majestic beauty is 

 lost, presenting nothing to the eye besides a dispropor- 

 tionately small crown of leaves, and a columnar mass of 

 gray trunks. They mostly grow singly in the neighbor- 

 hood of other trees, and are to the tropical forests what 

 the pine is to the northern. The reader must not sup- 

 pose that the palm tree casts a spreading shadow, under 

 which the traveler may repose, for its entire foliage con- 

 sists of about a dozen large, feathery, fan-like leaves, 

 forming a crown at the top, therefore the poet's dream- 

 ing " under the shade of the lofty palm" is sheer non- 

 sense. Neither ought it to be supposed that the palm 

 yields so abundantly, that its fruit, cabbage, and vin- 

 ous sap can supply a whole colony with food and drink. 

 The so-called cabbage, which is the terminal bud of the 

 trunk, does indeed furnish a delicious article of food, but 

 the procuring of it costs the life of one beautiful tree, 

 and if eaten for any length of time brings on dysentery. 



