THE PLANTAIN AND BANANA. 



457 



vation is little benefit in so higli an altitude. It is the same with the 

 cassava root. The cane at 3480 feet altitude gives no sugar, and 

 indigo at 4860 feet affords no colouring matter. We may here remark 

 that it was on these and similar facts that Boussingault based his 

 theory, which is that the time required by a plant to arrive at maturity 

 is as the inverse ratio of the temperature; therefore knowing the 

 mean temperature of any place, and the number of days which a plant 

 takes to ripen, the time required at any other point, more or less 

 elevated, can be ascertained. 



Finlayson gives the following interesting information respecting 

 the wild plantain tree, found on the island of Pulo Ubi, off the 

 southern extremity of Cambodia. 



" We had," he says, " the good fortune to find that splendid herba- 

 ceous plant in flower : unlike, however, that luscious and most deli- 

 cious fruit raised by the hand of man, the fruit of the wild plantain 

 contains scarce any pulp whatever. Its leathery sheath encloses 

 numerous series of large black seeds, attached to a pithy, central stem, 

 and immersed in a gummy substance resembling bird-lime. 



" It appeared, by our systematic works, that the seeds of this most 

 useful plant have been but rarely seen by botanists ; hence doubts had 

 been expressed upon the subject. In none of the cultivated varieties 

 are there any seeds discoverable ; though, at times, we may observe 

 minute black points in the pulp, disposed in longitudinal rows. 

 These are, probably, the feeble traces of seeds not yet quite extin- 

 guished by cultivation, the black perisperm being the last to dis- 

 appear. The seeds were numerous, covered with a thick, black, 

 brittle shell, and as larje as those of the custard apple, but of a more 

 irregular shape. 



" There is no necessity to refer, as Willdenow does, the origin of 

 all the cultivated varieties, and of all the species enumerated by bota- 

 nists to the Musa Troglodytarurfi, a native of the Molucca islands, as 

 the parent stock. Our specimens accorded with the descriptions given 

 of Musa sapientum. The seeds were in all respects perfect, and appa- 

 rently capable of propagating the plant. Indeed its existence on these 

 islands, so rarely frequented by man, and altogether unfit for culti- 

 vation, can be accounted for on no other principle than the fertility of 

 the seeds." — (Journal of a Mission to Siam, dc.) 



The banana is like the plantain, but its stalk is marked with purple 

 spots, and its fruit is shorter and rounder. There are 20 varieties of 

 plantain in Tenasserim, 10 in Ceylon, and 30 in Burmah. From Asia 

 it has been introduced into the West Indies and South America, and 

 into England in 1680. It is more productive than wheat. In South 

 America the fruit is dried and preserved, while the flour is separated 

 and made into biscuits. The fruit can be kept for 20 or 30 years 

 owing to the sugar in it ; 100 parts of the fresh fruit contains 27 of 

 dry nutritive matter ; the potato gives 25. In the plantain fruit out 

 of 100 parts there are of — 



Water . . . . 14 parts. 



Starch .. .. 67i „ 



Gum .. .. 44 „ 



Celhilar fibre . . 4f „ 



Sugar . . , . 2 parts. 



Oil 1 „ 



Albumeu .. ^ „ 



A«h .. 41 „, 



