54 
PREFATORY REMARKS ON THE GENUS MUSA. 
in Cuha^ where the thermometer is known to descend as low as 45 degrees Fahren- 
heit. The produce of these plants is enormous, and the short period and little 
labour required to bring- this to perfection is wonderful to the European, who has 
never witnessed them growing in a natural state. Eight or nine months after the 
suckers are planted, the flower-spike or raceme may be seen arising from the centre 
of the leaves, which, in three months after, will be feathered with clusters of ripened 
fruit, when it is collected and preserved by the natives. The whole labour required 
in the cultivation of a plantation of these plants is, to cut the stalks laden with 
ripe fruit, and to give them a slight nourishment once or twice in the year by 
digging about their roots. These plants, therefore, for a great portion of mankind, 
are what wheat, barley^ and rye, are for the inhabitants of Western Asia, and Europe, 
and what the numerous varieties of rice are for those of the countries beyond the 
Indus. The produce of a single plant not unfrequently weighs upwards of seventy 
pounds; thus we may estimate the produce of a plantation containing a thousand 
square feet, planted with thirty or forty plants, to exceed four thousand pounds of 
nutritive substance. M. Humboldt calculates, "that as thirty-three pounds of 
wheat and ninety-nine pounds of potatoes require the same space as that in which 
four thousand pounds of bananas are grown, the produce of bananas is, consequently, 
to that of wheat as 133 : 1, and to that of potatoes as 44 : 1." 
The banana, ripened in the hothouses of Europe, has an insipid taste; but yet 
the natives of both Indies, to millions of whom it supplies their principal food, eat 
it with avidity, and are satisfied with the nourishment it affords. The fruit is a 
very sugary substance, and in warm countries the natives find such food not only 
satisfying for the moment, but permanently nutritive ; yet, weight for weight, the 
nutritive matter of these plants cannot be compared to that of wheat, or even 
potatoes. At the same time a much greater number of individuals may be supported 
upon the produce of a piece of ground planted with these plants, compared with a 
piece of the same size in Europe growing wheat. Humboldt estimates the propor- 
tion as twenty-five to one, and he illustrates the fact by remarking that a European, 
newly arrived in the torrid zone, is struck with nothing so much as the extreme 
smallness of the spot under cultivation^, round a cabin which contains a numerous 
family of Indians. 
The ripe fruit is preserved like the fig, by being dried in the sun ; in this state 
it is an agreeable and healthy aliment. Meal is extracted from the fruit by cutting 
it in slices, drying it in the sun and then powdering it. 
In addition to the uses made of these plants already noticed, slices of the fruit 
fried as fritters are considered a luxury ; the tops of the young suckers are eaten as 
a vegetable of great delicacy ; the fermented juice produces a good wine much 
indulged in by the natives, and praised as agreeable by Europeans. In a paper on 
Tropical Fruits, by Dr. Lindley, in the fifth vol. of the Horticultural Society's 
Transactions, he states, upon the authority of Mr. Crawford, that some of the 
varieties (which are numerous) are equal in flavour, when served up raw, to fine 
Reinette apples, and when stewed equal to our best stewing pears. They vary, 
according to the varieties, in shape, from eight or nine inches long and two broad, 
