tots being very
little acquainted with agriculture, or with the use of the cerealia,
and subsisting principally upon wild bulbs and fruits, obtain food
also from _Encephalartos caffer_, a species of _Zamia_, with a
cylindrical trunk, the thickness of a man's body, and about seven feet
high. Having cut down a tree, they took out the pith, that nearly
fills its trunk, and which abounds in mucilage and an amylaceous
fluid; after keeping this for some time buried under ground in the
skin of an animal, they reduced it by pounding and kneading into a
kind of paste; and then baked it in hot ashes, in the form of round
cakes, nearly an inch thick. The Dutch colonists, in consequence of
this practice of the natives, called the plant brood-boon, which
signifies literally bread tree.

THE PLANTAIN AND BANANA.

The several varieties of the edible plantain which are known and
cultivated throughout the West Indies, Africa, and in the East are all
reducible to two classes, viz., the Plantain and the Banana (_Musa
Paradisiaca_and _sapientum_). The difference between these two plants
is even so slight as to be scarcely specific; it is therefore most
probable that there was originally but one stock, from which they
have, by cultivation and change of locality, been derived.

The tiger plantain (_M. maculata_) and the black ditto (_M.
sylvestris_) are cultivated in Jamaica. The whole of the species and
varieties of the tribe are what are called polygamous monoecious
plants, each individual tree bearing the male and female organs of
reproduction.

The plantain and its varieties invariably bear male, female and
hermaphrodite flowers within the same spathe, all of them being
imperfect and consequently unproductive of seed. An individual may,
even from excess of culture, moisture, &c., be entirely incapable of
flowering. During the prevalence of a disease or blight among the
plantain walks of Demerara in the years 1844 and 1845, it was
seriously proposed to introduce male plantains, or obtain fresh stock
by seed.

It is, therefore, necessary to determine with exactness, if possible,
whether the Plantain or Banana, (whichever be the parent stock) exists
anywhere at present, or has been known to have existed as a perfect
plant, that is bearing fertile seeds; or, whether it has always
existed in the imperfect state, that is, incapable of being procreated
by seed, the only state in which it at present exists in our colonies.

Whether Linn