344 REVIEWS. 



known in cultivation), the home of which is in Brazil,^ that 

 botanists have been unable clearly to distinguish the two, ex- 

 cept by the fact that ours, dying down to the ground at ap- 

 proach of winter, remains herbaceous. It occurs in a rather 

 narrow geographical range ; and Dr. Masters, in his elaborate 

 study of the order (Trans. Linn. Soc, xxvii. 641 ; see also 

 Flora Brasiliensis), says that "being so far separate from 

 the remainder of its allies of the same subgenus, [it] may be 

 considered as an outlier." Altogether we may infer that the 

 fruit and the name were originally derived from the same 

 South American source. 



Musa, Banana. — The author concludes, as did Robert 

 Brown, that Banana and Plantain are varieties of one species ; 

 also that this species is of the Old World ; that in all prob- 

 ability it was not known in the West Indies when discovered 

 by Columbus ; but that in respect to the western side of South 

 America there is some evidence which is not easily ruled out, 

 especially the statement of Garcilasso that the Peruvians had 

 the Banana before the conquest, and of Stevenson ( Trav. in 

 S. Amer.), who is said to have seen in the ancient Peruvian 

 tombs beds made of Banana leaves. This is discredited because 

 the author found beans in the same tombs, " et que la feve est 

 certainement de I'ancien monde." But if Stevenson wrote 

 beans, without doubt he meant the seeds of Phaseolus, not of 

 Faba. It would rather seem that the Banana, like the Sweet 

 Potato and Cocoa-nut, had early been transported over the 

 Pacific. 



Phaseolus vulgaris, Kidney Bean. — Three weeks after his 

 first landing in the New World Columbus saw, near Nuevitas 

 in Cuba, fields planted with " faxones and fabas very differ- 

 ent from those of Spain," and two da3^s afterwards, following 

 the north coast of Cuba, he again found " land well cultivated 

 with these fexoes and habas much unlike ours." " Faxones " 



^ Xot Mexico, although indeed said to have been brought from New 

 Spain to the garden of the Farnese palace, in Rome, as early as 1619. 

 It is described, under the name of " Maracot " — with excellent plates 

 showing the plant, the flower, and the fruit — by Tobias Aldinus, in 

 " Rarior. Plant. Horti Farnesiani " (Romse, 1625), pp. 49-59. 



