274 
upon the cultivation and selection of the fruit, and when this has been 
done the banana disease (Kew Bulletin, 1890, p. 272, and 1892, p. 48) 
has not made much headway. 
In the year 1891 two Wardian cases of the Jamaica banana, the fruit 
of which is so largely exported to the United States, were received at 
ve from the Botanical Department, Jamaica. These were forwarded 
he "mee est of the it ae eA John Thurston, K.C.M.G., who was 
ient to the Botanie Station at Suva by way of Sydney. Man 
the plants survived the long voyages to Fiji, and in May 1892 they were 
reported as “ growing apace.’ 
Burton ( Cent. nek ii., p. 58) says :— 
“The Mdizi or plantain-tree is apparently an aborigine of these 
latitudes; in certain ime as in Usumbara, Karagwah, and Uganda, 
it is the staff of life. A single bunch forms a load for a man. It is 
found in the island and on the coast of Zanzibar, at K’hutu in the head 
of the alluvial valley, and, though rarely, in the mountains of Usagara, 
The best fruit is that grown by the Arabs at Unyanyembe; it is still a 
poor specimen, coarse and insipid, stringy and full of seeds, and strangers 
rarely indulge i in it.” 
Speke says the plantain or * N’deezee” is the food of the countries 
one de on either side of the equator, acres of ground being covere " 
3 Hd groves. On the high lands of the interior it ceases to he 
Amongst the per west of Uganda, Schweinfurth (Heart of 
A MA ii, a ) re 
ret: of oom plantain (Musa Ae nated gives them very 
little route; the young shoots are stuck in the ground after it has been 
slackened by the rain, the old plants are snffored? to die down just 
as they are ; and this is all the cultivation that is vouchsafed. In 
the propagation - these plantains, however, the Monbutto have a 
More recently beyond Yambuya, in the heart of the great tropical 
forest, Mr. Stanley (Darkest Africa, i., p. 252) found “a clearing three 
miles in diameter abounding in native produce and hitherto unvisited 
by the Manyuema. Almost ev ery plantain stalk bore an enormous 
bunch of fruit, with from 50 to 140 plantains attached. Some speci- 
mens of this fruit were 22 inches long." 
Also at Indeman (vol. ii., p. 55): “The plantain groves were extensive 
and laden with fruit, and especially with ripe mellow plantains whose 
fragrance was delicious.’ 
And in approaching AR and Andikumu * * in half-an-hour the main 
body of the caravan filed in, to find such a store of abnormally large 
re i sies. 
While at Ngoti above Urigi (vol. ii., p. 383): “A fine bunch of 
bananas could be purchased for 10 cowries, and as 8 cowries consti- 
tuted a day's ration allowance, no one could possibly complain of 
insufficient food." 
Dr. Parke speaks of * grim staryation ” and “ grim despair" which 
overtook AS expedition (Equatorial Africa, p. 113), and rejoices at 
last in the * great luck? which brought it within reach of the generous 
