524 COSMOS. 



Besides the knowledge of these products, which soon be- 

 came objects of universal commerce, and many of which were 

 transported by the Seleucidae to Arabia,* the aspect of a richly 

 embellished tropical nature speedily yielded the Greeks enjoy- 

 ments of another kind. The gigantic forms of hitherto 

 unknown animals and plants filled their imaginations with the 

 most exciting images. Writers, whose dry scientific style is 

 usually devoid of all animation, became poetic when they 

 described the characteristics of animals, as, for instance, ele- 

 phants, or when they spoke of the height of trees, whose 

 summits cannot be reached by the arrow in its flight, and 

 whose leaves are larger than the shields of the infantry, of " the 

 bamboo, a light feathery tree-like grass," " each of whose 

 jointed parts (internodia) may serve for a many-oared keel," 

 or of the Indian fig-tree that takes root by its branches, and 

 whose stem has a diameter of twenty-eight feet, and which, as 

 Onesicritus remarked, with much truth to nature, forms " a 

 leafy canopy similar to a tent, supported by numerous pil- 

 lars." The tall arborescent ferns, which, according to my 

 opinion, constitute the greatest ornament of tropical scenery, 

 are never mentioned by Alexander's companions,! although 

 they speak of the noble fan-like umbrella palm, and the deli- 

 cate and ever fresh green of the cultivated banana. J 



* Plin., Hist. Nat., xvi. 32. (On the introduction of rare Asiatic 

 plants into Egypt, by the Ptolemies; see Pliny, xii. 14 and 17.) 



t Humboldt, De distrib. geogr. plantarum, p. 178. 



J I have often corresponded since the year 1827 with Lassen, on the 

 remarkable passage in Pliny, xii. 6: "Major alia (arbor) porno et 

 euavitate praecellentior, quo sapientes Indorum vivunt. Folium alas 

 avium imitatur, longitudine trium cubitorum, latitudine duum. Fruc- 

 tum cortice mittit, admirabilem succi dulcedine ut uno quaternos satiet. 

 Arbori nomen palce, porno arience." The following is the result of 

 my learned friend's investigation; "Ainarasinha places the banana 

 (musa, pisang) at the head of all nutritive plants. Among the many 

 Sanscrit names which he adduces, are varanabuscha, bhanuphala (sun 

 fruit), and moko, whence the Arabic mauza. Phala (pala) is fruit in 

 general, and it is therefore only by a misunderstanding that it has been 

 taken for the name of the plant. In Sanscrit varana without buscha is 

 not used as the name of the banana, although the abbreviation may have 

 been characteristic of the popular language. Varana would be in Greek 

 ovaptva, which is certainly not very far removed from ariena." (Com- 

 pare Lassen, Ind. Alterthumskunde, bd. i. p. 262; my Essai politique 

 sur la Nouv. Espagne, t. ii. 1827, p. 382; and Relation hist., t. i. p. 491.) 



