THE PLANTAIN AND BANANA. 321 



good tillage, free ventilation, and mixed crops, the blight may yet 

 be successfully combated. 



A great diminution in the cultivation of the plantain has been 

 occasioned in British Gruiana by this blight or disease, which first 

 made its destructive appearance in Ess.vjuibo, upwards of I 

 years ago, where its ravages increased wib:i such fatal intensity as 

 to render the profitable growth of the plant almost hopeless ; and. 

 up to this hour no one has been able to discover the immediate or 

 remote cause of this extraordinary vegetable endemic ; whether 

 arising from the action of insects among the sheathes of the 

 petioles of the leaves, or in the soil, or from organic decay of the 

 plant, remains without solution. The last-named cause seems to 

 be rejected, by the fact that the fructification of tlie plant is as 

 healthy and abundant in parts of the colony where the blight 

 does not prevail, both in number and size of the fruit upon the 

 spike, as at any former period. On the east coast of Demerara, 

 both the plantain and banana have been grown for more than 

 twenty years upon the same land, without any attack of the 

 disease, and without any extraneou-j manure or even lime having 

 been applied, and the plants still exhibit great luxuriance, and 

 produce their former weight of fruit. 



The foliage of the plantain affords food and bedding, and is 

 used for thatch, making paper, and basket making ; and from its 

 petioles is obtained a fine and durable thread. The tops of the 

 young plants are eaten as a delicate vegetable ; the fermented 

 juice of the trunk produces an agreeable wine. 



The abundance and excellence of the nutritive food which the 

 plants of this valuable genus supply are well known ; but of 

 the numerous uses to which they 'are applied I may mention 

 the following : 



The fruit is served up both raw and stewed ; slices fried are also 

 considered a delicacy. Plantains are sometimes boiled and eaten 

 with salt meat, and pounded and ma<lo into puddings, and used in 

 various other ways. In their ripe state these fruits contain much 

 starchy matter. Prom their spurious stems, the fibres of the 

 spiral vessels may be pulled out in such quantity as to be used for 

 tinder. M. textilis yields a fibre which is used in India in the manu- . 

 facture of fine muslins, and the coarser woody tissue is exported 

 in large quantities from Manila, uuder the name of white rope or 

 Manila hemp. Horses, cattle, swine, and other domestic animals 

 are fed upon the fruit, leaves, and succulent trunks. 



The same extent of ground which in wheat would only main- 

 tain two persons, will yield sustenance under the banana to fifty. 

 That eminent naturalist and elegant writer, the Baron Yon Hum- 

 boldt, states (" Political Essay on New Spain," vol. ii.) that an 

 acre of land cultivated with plantains produces nearly twenty times 

 as much food as the like space sown with corn in Europe; -He 

 refers to a place in Venezuela, where the most careful tillage was 

 rendered to a piece of land, yielding produce supporting -a hum. 

 ble population residing in huts, each placed in the centre of an 



Y 



