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THE BANANA. 



spans liigli, is an aboriginal of Hindostan, and 

 possibly of East Africa, where, however, the seeds 

 might easily have been floated from the East : it 

 grows almost spontaneously in TJnyamwezi and 

 upon the shores of the great inland lakes. Here 

 the banana,^ which maturing rapidly affords a 

 perennial supply of fruit, and whose enormous 

 rate of produce has been described by many 

 writers, is the staff of savage life, windy as the 

 acorn which is supposed to have fed our fore- 

 fathers in Europe. As usual where men are com- 

 pelled by their wants to utilize a single tree, the 

 cocoa, for instance, or the calabash, these East 

 Africans apply the plantain to a vast variety of 

 uses, and allow no part of it to be wasted. The 

 stem when green gives water enough to quench 

 the wanderer's thirst and to wash his hands ; the 

 parenchyma has somewhat the taste of cucumber, 

 and sun-dried it is employed for fuel. The fresh 

 cool leaves are converted into rain-pipes, spoons, 

 plates, and even bottles : desiccated they make 

 thatch, and a substitute for wrapping-papers ; and 



* The banana is the Musa Sapientum : the plantain is the 

 M. Paradisiaca, and Linnaeus picturesquely adopted Musa 

 from the Arabic Mauz (;^) : in India the small species is 



called plantain, the large horse-plantain, and the French term 

 both ' bananes.' In E. Africa there are half-a-dozen varieties 

 of the 'Ndizi.' 



