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useful plants, wild or cultivated, in Mexico, convince me that at the time 
of the discovery of America the banana did not exist in the whole of the 
eastern part of the continent." 
At the present time the plantain and or ie a diem! cultivated 
in the tropics of the New World, and they hay ome as conspicuous a 
feature in the landscape as in the Old Worl, liay propin by 
suckers and often found half wild in the fores 
With regard to Polynesia, Seemann remarks m "a diee p. 288) 
that “a great many different kinds of Musa were found established in 
different parts of cultivated Polynesia, when Europeans first became 
familiar with them. In Tahiti alone, Banks and Solander saw 28.” 
Sagot states that the wild banana most allied to the cultivated, and from 
which, therefore, it may be presumed to have originated, has the same 
height and habit, The spike is pendent towards the earth; the fruits 
are ee more distant one from another, and contain several fertile 
It also produces offsets from its rootstock. a occurs in some of 
ihe Le of India, notably at Chittagong (Roxburgh, 77. Ind. i. 663), 
in Ceylon (Thwaites Enum., p. 321), in Cochin China, Siam especially, 
in the small island of Pulo Ubi (Finlayson), i in the Philippines (Rumph an 
Blanco). Sagot adds: “ I am unable io say if it is the same plant that 
is scattered over this vast area, or if there are nico: distinet species 
belonging respectively to the different countri 
In some countries, as in India, Ceylon, Mauritius, aud Cochin China, 
bananas are cultivated with fruits containing several fertile seeds, which 
appear to belong to a wild form as yet slightly modified by cultivation. 
The BANANA or Sweet PLANTAIN (Musa sapientum, Linn.). This is 
the sweet fruit used without cooking, it has various names in different 
in India, a distinction has been made in regard to the size and delicac 
of the fruit, the small being the banana and the large the agree The 
Spaniards of tropical America call the banana “ bacove,” “ bacooba,’’ 
or ‘‘pacooba,” while in other — countries var sins of the banana 
are known as *eambur," or “camburi,” or “platano guineo." The 
English in the W est dndiss call the sinall and delicate bee “ fig- 
* figs." n ll the ban * bananes 
The variety known as “pisang maas,” or the golden pisang, appears 
to come nearest to the banana as maed elsewhere. 
One of the earliest accounts of the banana and plantain is given by 
Ligon in his History of Barbados, published in 1657. In this work 
there are two wood cuts, drawn, as the author states, “ by memory only,” 
showing the habits of the two plants and the fruit. Of the “bonano” 
he says “ it is of sweeter taste than the * plantine, and for that reason 
the negroes will not meddle with it, for it is not so useful a 
food.” 
mimi 8 eii emt published in his Voyages, some years later, 
is more exact 
“The pt onano tree islike the plantain for shape and bigness, nor easi ily 
distinguishable from it but by its fruit, which isa great deal icone and 
