SEED-VESSELS WE EAT 



239 



So, with the least possible delay and handling, the 

 crop moves to the consumer. Cold storage is not 

 for bananas. But in the cool atmosphere that 

 suits them they gradually ripen, and hung in the 

 grocer's windows, turn from green to yellow. 



The big yellow Martinique is the most common 

 variety we have. The crimson fruit of the Red 

 Jamaica is occasionally shipped in, and is used in 

 making up baskets of fancy fruits. We rarely see 

 the kind called plantain, that is not sweet, but is 

 cooked as a vegetable in all tropical countries. The 

 fruit of one of these coarse plantains in East 

 Africa is about the size and shape of a man's arm ! 



A traveller in the Far East describes the great 

 golden bunches of bananas heaped by the tons in 

 the market places of cities of Java, and cheap 

 beyond belief. "The Java pisang, or banana, 

 however, is but a coarse plantain with pinkish- 

 yellow, dry pulp, of a pumpkiny flavor that sadly 

 disappoints the palate. Yet it is Nature's greatest 

 gift in the tropics. Every tiny village and almost 

 every little native hut has its banana patch or its 

 banana tree, which requires nothing of labor in 

 cultivation, save the weeding away of the old 

 stalks. Four thousand pounds of this food will 

 grow, without human aid, within the same space 

 of ground required to raise ninety-nine pounds of 



