DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 



159 



in developing large black seeds, which are 

 embedded in a pulp that not even an an- 

 thropoid ape could eat with any pleasure. 



"Is it possible that the slightly bitter, 

 dry, tasteless, white pith surrounding these 

 large inedible seeds could have been any 

 attraction to primitive man in Africa, so 

 that he protected and fostered one of these 

 species of Musa until it developed into the 

 cultivated banana, exactly like the cultivated 

 banana separately developed in Eastern Asia? 



" It would be difficult in any case to make 

 a Nuganda of to-day believe that his beloved 

 food substance which provides him with a 

 mass of nourishing vegetable pulp, with a 

 dessert fruit, with sweet beer and heady 

 spirit, with soap, plates, dishes, napkins, 

 and materials for foot - bridges, was not 

 always indigenous to the land he dwells 

 in, and of which it has become the dis- 

 tinguishing feature." 



