Lindley enumerates ten species of Musa, some of which grow to the height of 25 or 30 feet, but that valuable species M.  Cavendishii, does not grow more than four or five feet high.

The bananas of the family of the Musaceae, appear to be natives of the southern portion of the Asiatic continent (R.  Brown, “Bot. of Congo,” p. 51).  Transplanted at an unknown epoch into the Indian Archipelago and Africa, they have spread also into the, New World, and in general into all intertropical countries, sometimes before the arrival of Europeans.

According to Humboldt it affords, in a given extent of ground, forty-four times more nutritive matter than the potato, and 133 times more than wheat.  These figures must be considered as only approximative, since nothing is more difficult than to estimate the nutritive qualities of different aliments.

Musa paradisiaca is cultivated in Syria, to latitude 34 deg.  Humboldt says it ceases to yield fruit at a height of 3,000 feet, where the mean annual temperature is 68 deg., and where, probably, the heat of summer is deficient.

The banana seems, however, to be found no higher than 4,600 feet in a state of perfection.

No fruit is so easily cultivated as are the varieties of the plantain.  There is hardly a cottage in the tropics that is not partly shaded by them; and it is successfully grown under other fruit trees, although it is independent of shelter.  Its succulent roots and dew-attracting leaves render it useful in keeping the ground moist during the greatest heats.  The plantain may be deemed the most valuable of fruits, since it will, in some measure, supply the place of grain in time of scarcity.  To the negroes in the West Indian Islands the plantain is invaluable, and, like bread to the Europeans, is with them denominated the staff of life.  In Jamaica, Demerara, Trinidad, and other principal colonies, many thousand acres are planted with these trees.

The vegetation of this tree is so rapid that if a line of thread be drawn across, and on a level with the top of one of the leaves, when it begins to expand, it will be seen, in the course of an hour, to have grown nearly an inch.  The fruit when ripe is of a pale yellow, about a foot in length and two inches thick, and is produced in bunches so large as each to weigh 40 lbs. and upwards.

The soil best suited to the growth of the plantain is found in the virgin land most recently taken in from the forest, having a formation of clay and decomposed vegetable substances.  A large portion of organic matter is required, as well as clay or other ponderous strata, to afford the greatest production of fruit.  I have known good plantains produced in the West Indies, upon land considerably exhausted by the culture of cotton, but which was enriched by the application of a quantity of the decomposed seed of that shrub near the roots of the young plantains.

In the Straits’ settlements of the East, the following are the most approved varieties:—­The royal plantain, which fruits in eight months; one which bears in a year, the milk plantain, the downy plantain, and the golden plantain or banana.  A species termed gindy has been lately imported from Madras, where it is in great request.  It has this advantage over the other kinds, that it can be stewed down like an apple while they remain tough.