OF PLANTS. 263 



and thus the object of the earliest culture, I mean the 

 Banana.* And this plant was not merely the first, but the 

 most valuable gift of Nature ; its slightly aromatic, sweet 

 and nutritive fruits are the sole, or at least the chief food 

 of the major part of the inhabitants of the hotter regions. 

 A creeping subterraneous root-stock sends out on high, from 

 lateral buds, a shaft fifteen to twenty feet long, which con- 

 sists merely of the rolled-up, sheath-like leaf-stalks, bearing 

 the velvet-like glancing leaves, often ten feet long and two 

 feet broad ; the midrib of the leaf alone is firm and thick, 

 but the blade of the leaf on either side so delicate, that it is 

 readily torn by the wind, whence the leaf acquires a peculiar 

 feathered aspect.f Among the leaves presses up the rich 

 cluster of flowers, which within three months after the 

 shoot has arisen, forms from 150 to 180 ripe fruits, about 

 the size and form of a Cucumber. The fruits weigh, 

 altogether, about 70 or SOlbs., and the same space which will 

 bear l,000lbs. of Potatoes, brings forth, in a much shorter 

 time, 44,000lbs. of Bananas ; and if we take account of 

 the nutritious matter which this fruit contains, a surface 

 which, sown with Wheat, feeds one man, planted with 

 Bananas affords sustenance to five-and-twenty. Nothing 

 strikes the European, landing in a tropical country, so much 

 as the little spot of cultivated land round a hut, which 

 shelters a very numerous Indian family. 



Not till long after did Man learn to know and cultivate 

 the gifts of Ceres. It must, in fact, surprise us, at present, 

 to see that but a few species of a single family of plants 

 furnish the principal food of the greater proportion of 

 mankind, namely, the so-called Corn-plants or Cerealia, 

 of the family of Grasses. This family includes nearly 



* Musa sapientum. 



t Vide the frontispiece, just below the Cocoa-palm. 



