59 



nearest port for shipment. The same material is woven into coarse 

 saddle-cloths for pack mules, or used in a loose pad for the same purpose. 

 The fresh banana If aves are used to shade young coffee or cacao seed- 

 lings in nursery beds, and to cover the cacao beans during the process of 

 fermentation. The midribs are often placed in the syrup of Muscovado 

 sugar when first poured into casks to assist to drain the molasses. 

 The young leaves before they open are beautifully smooth and soft, 

 and are used as a dressing for blisters ; while the juice, according 

 to Barham, " is good against burn." The water from the soft trunk 

 is astringent and employed to check diarrhoea. The juice from the skin 

 of the green plantain, says Lunan, when cut forms a good cement for 

 broken china or other earthenware. Long remarks that the juice 

 [probably a pectose] which drops from a bunch of bananas hung up in 

 the shade to ripen makes a very good vinegar. Hughes {Barbados, 

 p. 182) mentions that " the pulpy stems of bananas are often sliced and 

 given by way of fodder to cattle." 



The inner undeveloped leaves, when quite white and tender, as well 

 as the flower or scape buds, are not infrequently eaten in the East Indies. 

 Kurz states that these miniature portions of the plantain (probably 

 from wild plants) are brought into the Calcutta bazaars to the amount 

 of half a ton daily. They are known as thor and are prepared for food 

 by boiling. Firminger possibly refers to something similar when he 

 states that " The head of the flowers of a variety of plantain known as 

 Kuntela in the neighbourhood of Calcutta before the sheath in which 

 they are enclosed expands, is often cut off, being esteemed a most 

 delicate vegetable." This use does not appear to have extended to 

 tropical America, or at least we have met no record of it, probably on 

 account of the absence there of wild plants in the abundance found in 

 the East. In other parts of India also the young flower- heads are 

 cooked and eaten in curries. The use of these portions of the plantain 

 stems for food is similar to the use in many parts of the world of the 

 leaf buds (or the cabbage) of many palms. There is, however, a 

 curious species of Musa already noticed from New Caledonia (possibly 

 altered by cultivation) described by Vieillard under the name of M. 

 oleracea. It produces no inflorescence and is cultivated on account of 

 its fleshy and farinaceous rhizomes which are cooked and eaten. It is 

 multiplied entirely by offsets. The infant spadix or scape of the 

 Abyssinian plantain (M. Ensete) is also used as a vegetable. The 

 young stem is first of all deprived of all its external envelopes and is 

 then cooked and eaten. "Prepared in this way, it resembles the cab- 

 bage of a palm." The plant is of £>reat importance for food purposes as 

 a vegetable in the damp valleys of Abyssinia, notably in the Soudan. It 

 extends also up the Nile Valley almost to the equator. The fruit, as 

 already mentioned, is usually regarded as not edible. 



Johnston, however, in his Kilima-njaro Expedition met with a singular 

 use of the seeds of the Ensete. He remarks that in the inside of the 

 seeds is a friable white pith easily rubbed into a white powder by the 

 natives. " When in this state it is used for divinations and augury by 

 being blown from the hand." He speaks of the very scanty pulp 

 found in the fruit in a fresh state as " just eatable." It is " faintly 

 sweet, but leaves a somewhat acrid taste in the mouth." Later on he 

 says u it is supposed by the natives that the children grow up fine and 

 tall if they eat of the pulp of the Ensete." A similar belief is said to 

 prevail also among the natives of the Nyassa region. The black 

 irregular-shaped glossy seeds, according to Captain Speke, arc strung into 

 necklaces, charms, and tiaras by the Waganda, and goats are fed on the 



