xcv 
BANANAS ARE NEWCOMERS 
I SN’T IT ODD that bananas, so common today, were 
quite unknown to our grandfathers! 
Bananas, in fact, did not enter much into trade until 
the beginning of the present century. They are grown in 
the tropics and have long been a popular food there. 
They will not grow where there is frost and so cannot be 
raised anywhere in the United States or in Europe ex¬ 
cept in the southern parts. To be used farther north, 
they must be shipped. This means that they must be 
handled in a hurry. With any fresh fruit it is a race to 
get it to market and get it used before it spoils. 
It is only in recent generations that ships have been 
fast enough and the plans for marketing have been well 
enough worked out for people in the temperate zones to 
be able to have bananas. 
Most people think that bananas grow wild in the 
tropics. It is true that banana plants grow wild but it is 
the cultivated banana plants that bear the best fruit. 
Fifty years ago people living in the tropics cultivated 
banana plants only for fruit for their own use. When it 
became possible to ship them north and sell great quan¬ 
tities of them, large plantations were developed. In Cen¬ 
tral America there are now so many plantations that a 
ship may be loaded with bananas every week in the year. 
The earliest record of banana farms comes from India. 
There were many of them along the foot of the Hima- 
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