SOUTH AMERICA 227 



a time, appears to have produced the best results. Plantains 

 require much the same system of cultivation as that 

 described for bananas, but give a heavier yield from the 

 same land. They delight in the stiff, newly empoldered 

 clay lands of British Guiana, not objecting to the slightly 

 saline element found where the sea or river has invaded the 

 place periodically at spring tides, while it was lying fallow 

 under the natural bush growth. Such lands yield heavily. 

 . . . New lands produce the most luxuriant plantain 

 growth, and are used for this purpose by estates, as they 

 will not at first grow canes well, but after a few years of 

 plantain and ground provision cultivation, they become 

 adapted to the requirements of sugar-cane cultivation." 



The experience of ten years on a cultivation of from 400 

 to 480 acres in plantains is given by the planter as follows : 

 Four hundred suckers are planted per acre at 12 ft. apart 

 in rows 9 ft. apart ; 75 per cent, only of the suckers succeed, 

 and their places have to be supplied. On a well-kept 

 cultivation every acre will give 300 good and 50 inferior 

 bunches per annum. The keeping up of the plantain 

 estate on a large scale costs about 6 per acre per annum, 

 supposing the estate to be already in good working order. 



Dr. Shier, of Demerara, paid considerable attention to 

 the preparation and use of preserved plantains and bananas 

 and of plantain flour. His studies were reported in the 

 " Catalogue of the Paris Exhibition of 1867," as follows : 



tk Preserved Plantains and Bananas. It was supposed 

 that the dried yellow plantain or banana might come into 

 competition with figs, and the sample exhibited at the 

 great London Exhibition of 1851, which had been prepared 

 in Mexico many years before, proved the great superiority 

 of the platano passado over figs in keeping properties and 

 in immunity from insect ravages. In Mexico, the simple 

 exposure of perfectly ripe plantains or bananas to the 

 sun's rays is sufficient to prepare them for the market in 

 an exportable form. . . . But whether from the greater 

 moisture of this climate, or a greater proportion of 

 nitrogenous elements in our plantains and bananas, it is 



