230 DE BANANA 



and yet you have been familiarly using it all your lifetime, 

 while 400,000 hundredweights of that useful article are 

 annually iniporti'd into this country alone. It is an in- 

 teresting study to take any day a list of market quotations, 

 and ask oneself about every material quoted, what it is and 

 what they do with it. 



For example, can you honestly pretend that you really 

 understand the use and importance of that valuable object 

 of everyday demand, fustic? I remember an ill-used 

 telegraph clerk in a tropical colony once complaining to me 

 that English cable operators were so disgracefully ignorant 

 about this important staple as invariably to substitute for 

 its name the word 'justice ' in all telegrams which origin- 

 ally referred to it. Have you any clear and definite notions 

 as to the prime origin and final destination of a thing 

 called jute, in whose sole manufacture the whole great and 

 flourishing town of Dundee lives and moves and has its 

 being? What is turmeric ? Whence do we obtain vanilla ? 

 How many commercial products are yielded by the orchids ? 

 How many totally distinct plants in different countries 

 afford the totally distinct starches lumped together in 

 grocers' lists under the absurd name of arrowroot ? When 

 you ask for sago do you really see that you get it ? and 

 how many entirely different objects described as sago are 

 known to commerce ? Define the uses of partridge canes 

 and cohune oil. What objects are generally manufactured 

 from tucum ? Would it surprise you to learn that English 

 door-handles are commonly made out of coquilla nuts ? 

 that your wife's buttons are turned from the indurated 

 fruit of the Tagua palm ? and that the knobs of umbrellas 

 grew originally in the remote depths of Guatemalan 

 forests ? Are you aware that a plant called manioc sup- 

 plies the starchy food of about one-half the population of 

 tropical America? These are the sort of inquiries with 



