DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 



157 



" I believe there is no record of the 

 banana having been known to the ancient 

 Egyptians. Its scientific name, ' Musa/ is 

 of course only a latinising of the Egyptian 

 Arabic word mus, and Muhammadan Egypt 

 only knew the fruit in the middle ages. 



" Therefore it is not very likely that the 

 cultivated banana reached tropical Africa 

 from Asia by way of Egypt, since its intro- 

 duction to Negroland would be at most too 

 recent to explain its long connection with 

 negro life as testified by linguistic evidence ; 

 neither is it easy under present climatic 

 conditions to conceive of the plant having 

 been cultivated from Western India through 

 Southern Persia and right across it into 

 Arabia. 



" Was it by any possibility brought by 

 some navigating people like the Phoenicians 

 or Sabeans across the Indian Ocean, and 

 started as an introduced plant on the east 

 coast of Africa, thence to spread right across 

 the continent to the Atlantic Ocean ? 



" Could it be possible that the emigrants 

 of Malay races speaking languages allied to 

 the Polynesian stock, who at unknown and 

 distant periods drifted across the Indian 

 Ocean from Sumatra and Java to Mada- 

 gascar, brought with them clumps of banana- 



