The hardly-ripe fruit is
stewed whole or cut in slices and roasted or baked.

Banana-meal is an important food-stuff; the fruit is peeled and cut in
strips, which are then dried and pounded in a mortar. In East Africa and
elsewhere, an intoxicating drink is prepared from the fruit. The root-stock
which bears the leaves is, just before the flowering period, soft and full
of starch, and is sometimes used as food, as in the case of the Abyssinian
species, _M. Ensete_.

The leaves cut in strips are plaited to form mats and bags; they are also
largely used for packing and the finer ones for cigarette papers. Several
species yield a valuable fibre, the best of which is "Manila hemp" (_q.v._)
from _M. textilis_.

The following is the composition of the flour, according to Hutchison:
water, 13%; proteid, 4%; fat, 0.5%; carbohydrates, 80%; salts, 2.5%. It
would require about eighty bananas of average size to yield the amount of
energy required daily, and about double that number to yield the necessary
amount of proteid. Hence the undue abdominal development of those who live
mainly on this article of diet (Hutchison). In recent years the cultivation
of the banana in Jamaica for the American and also for the English market
has been greatly developed.

BANAS, or BUNAS, the name of three rivers of India. (1) A river of
Rajputana, which rises in the Aravalli range in Udaipur, drains the Udaipur
valley, and after a course of 300 m. flows into the Chambal. (2) A river of
the Shahabad district of Bengal, which forms the drainage channel between
the Arrah canal and the Sone canals system, and finally falls into the
Gangi nadi. (3) A river of Chota Nagpur in Bengal, which rises in the state
of Chang Bhakar and falls into the Sone near Rampur.

BANAT (Hungarian Bansag), a district in the south-east of Hungary,
consisting of the counties of Torontal, Temes and Krasso-Szoreny. The term,
in Hungarian, means generally a frontier province governed by a _ban_ and
is equivalent to the German term _Mark_. There were in Hungary several
banats, which disappeared during the Turkish wars, as the banat of
Dalmatia, of Slavonia, of Bosnia and of Croatia. But when the word is used
without any other qualification, it indicates the Temesvar banat, which
strangely acquired this title after the peace of Passarowitz (1718), though
it was never governed by a _ban_. The Banat is bounded E. by the
Transylvanian Alps, S. by the Danube, W. by the Theiss and