304 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 



has remained very nearly the same for about five thou- 

 sand years. What it was previously, palaeontological 

 discoveries may one day reveal. 



Banana — Mv^a sapientMm and M. paradisiaca, 

 Linnjeus ; M. sapientuyn, Brown. 



The iDanana or bananas were generally considered 

 to be natives of Southern Asia, and to have been carried 

 into America by Europeans, till Humboldt threw 

 doubts upon their purely Asiatic origin. In his work 

 on New Spain ^ he quoted early authors who assert 

 that the banana was cultivated in America before the 

 conquest. 



He admits, on Oviedo's authority,^ its introduction 

 by Father Thomas of Berlangas from the Canaries into 

 San Domingo in 1516, whence it was introduced into 

 other islands and the mainland.' He recognizes the 

 absence of any mention of the banana in the accounts of 

 Columbus, Alonzo Negro, Pinzon, Vespuzzi, and Cortez. 

 The silence of Hernandez, who lived half a century after 

 Oviedo, astonishes him and appears to him a remarkable 

 carelessness ; " for," he says,* " it is a constant tradition 

 in Mexico and on the whole of the mainland that the 

 platano arton, and the dominico were cultivated long 

 before the Spanish conquest." The author who has 

 most carefully noted the different epochs at which 

 American agriculture has been enriched by foreign pro- 

 ducts, the Peruvian Garcilasso de la Vega,® says dis- 

 tinctly that at the time of the Incas, maize, quinoa, the 

 potato, and, in the warm and temperate regions, bananas 

 formed the staple food of the natives. He describes the 

 Musa of the valleys in the Andes ; he even distinguishes 

 the rarer species, with a small fruit and a sweet aromatic 

 flavour, the ciomimco, from the common banana or arton. 



* numboiat, Nouvelle Esparjne, Ist edit., ii. p. 360. 



» Oviedo, Hist. Nat, 1556, p. 112. Oviedo's first work is of 1526. 

 He is the earliest naturalist quoted by Dryander (_Bibl. Eanls) for 

 America. 



* I tave also seen this passage in the translation of Oviedo by 

 Ramusio, vol. iii. p. 115. 



* Humboldt, Nouvelle Espagne, 2nd edit., p. 385. 



' Garcilasao de la Vega, Cominentarios Seales, i. p. 282. 



