67 



Loudon adds : " a drink like the best southern cider is made from 

 the banana." 



A proposal was made a short time ago to import bananas in pulp to 

 Europe for the purpose of making wine from it. 



Trade. 



Fresh Bananas in the United States. — The following information, 

 issued in 1889 by a large dealer in bananas at New York, is reproduced 

 from the Agricultural Record of Trinidad, i., pp. 47, 48 : — 



" Regarding bananas, good, large fruit and large bunches will always 

 bring good prices in this market. Small bunches and small fruit never 

 pay the shipper. March, April, May, June, and July, are the best 

 months to ship bananas here. Extra fine large bunches in those 

 months will bring $2 to $2 25 c. per bunch and ready sale, when small 

 bunches will not sell for over 60 c. to 75 c. per bunch and a drug in the 

 market at even those low prices. 



" Bananas are brought to New York by the thousands of bunches 

 very successfully, and the passage by steamer is from eight to nine days 

 and oft times 10 days. Our market would take one million bunches of 

 bananas a month at $2 to $2 25 c. per bunch (extra fine fruit) in the 

 months mentioned above, and the banana trade is as yet only in its 

 infancy. The demand is increasing each year. 



u I imported 20 years ago 4,000 bunches bananas from Baracoa, it 

 took 10 days to sell them. Ten years ago I imported a cargo of 10,000 

 bunches on the S.S. " Cleopatra," from Jamaica ; everybody said I was 

 crazy ; it took four days to sell them. This year I have seen 14 

 steamers discharging cargoes in New York in one week, ranging from 

 10,000 to 16,000 bunches bananas each. The cargoes were sold out in 

 four to five hours." 



The latest information in regard to the trade in fresh bananas at New 

 York is contained in the following note which appeared in Garden and 

 Forest, May 9, 1894, p. 190 :— 



"The demand for bananas is shown by the quick sale of 130,000 

 bunches in this city alone last week, at a wholesale price as high as 

 £1 65 c. a bunch. The scarcity and high price of domestic and all other 

 foreign fruits, excepting pineapples, help the sale of bananas at this 

 season, and large orders are received here from the interior and from 

 Canada." 



Fresh Bananas in England. — Fresh bananas are regularly shipped 

 to this country and the Continent from Madeira and the Canary 

 Islands. The quantity received is not large. This may be accounted 

 for by the fact that the fruit is not always of good quality, and 

 consists for the most part of the produce of the dwarf banana 

 (Musa Cavendishii). When well grown and allowed to get fully ripe 

 this is, however, an excellent fruit. As seen in this country it is 

 evidently gathered before it is fully grown, the pulp is dry and mealy, 

 and there is little or no flavour. A few bunches of the best Jamaica and 

 Fig bananas are occasionally received in this country, but on the whole 

 the English have not shown a disposition to use bananas as a dessert 

 fruit on anything like the scale seen in the temperate parts of the New 

 World. 



According to the Gardeners' Chronicle, 1886 [1], p. 498, "The 

 exportation of bananas from Grand Canary and TenerilVe is reported 



23099 E 2 



