such abundance that if the sugar-cane was not cultivated in the banana region, we might extract sugar from this fruit to greater advantage than is done in Europe from red beet and the grape. The banana, when gathered green, contains the same nutritive principle which is observed in grain, rice, the tuberose roots, and the sagou, namely the amylaceous sediment united with a very small portion of vegetable gluten. By kneading with water meal of bananas dried in the sun, I could only obtain a few atoms of this ductile and viscous mass, which resides in abundance in the perisperma, and especially in the embryo of the cerealia. If, on the one hand, the gluten which has so much analogy to animal matter, and which swells with heat, is of great use in the making of bread; on the other hand, it is not indispensable to render a root or fruit nutritive. M. Proust discovered gluten in beans, apples, and quinces; but he could not discover any in the meal of potatoes. Gums, for example, that of the mimosa nilotica (acacia vera Willd.), which serves for nourishment to several African tribes in their passages through the desert, prove that a vegetable substance may be a nutritive aliment without containing either gluten or amylaceous matter.

It would be difficult to describe the numerous preparations by which the Americans render the fruit of the musa, both before and after its maturity, a wholesome and agreeable diet. I have fre

quently seen in ascending rivers, that the natives, after the greatest fatigues, make a complete din ner on a very small portion of manioc and three bananas (platano arton) of the large kind. In the time of Alexander, if we are to credit the ancients, the philosophers of Hindostan were still more sober. "Arbori nomen pala pomo ariena, quo sapientes Indorum vivunt. Fructus admirabilis succi dulcedine ut uno quaternos satiet." (Plin. XII. 12). In warm countries the people in general not only consider sugary substances as a food which satisfies for the moment, but as truly nutritive. I have frequently observed, that the mule-drivers who carried our baggage on the coast of Caraccas gave the preference to unprepared sugar (papelon) over fresh animal food.

Physiologists have not yet determined with precision what characterises a substance eminently nutritive. To appease the appetite by stimulating the nerves of the gastric system, and to furnish matter to the body which may easily assimilate with it, are modes of action very different. Tobacco, the leaves of the erythroxylon cocca mixed with quick lime, the opium which the. natives of Bengal have frequently used for whole months in times of scarcity, will appease the violence of hunger; but these substances act in a very different manner from wheaten bread, the root of the jatropha, gum-arabic, the lichen of Iceland, or the putrid fish which is the principal

food of several tribes of African negroes. There can be no doubt, the bulk being equal, superazoted matter, or animals, are more nutritive than vegetable matter; and it appears that among vegetables, gluten is more nutritive than starch, and starch more than mucilage; but we must beware of attributing to these insulated principles what depends, in the action of the aliment on living bodies, on the varied mixture of hydrogen, carbonate, and oxygen. Hence a matter becomes eminently nutritive if it contains, like the bean of the cocoa-tree (theobroma cacao), besides the amylaceous matter, an aromatic principle which excites and fortifies the nervous system.

These considerations, to which we cannot give more development here, will serve to throw some light on the comparisons which we have already made of the produce of different modes of cultiva tion. If we draw from the same space of ground three times as many potatoes as wheat in weight, we must not therefore conclude that the cultivation of tuberous plants will on an equal surface maintain three times as many individuals as the cultivation of cereal gramina. The potatoe is reduced to the fourth part of its weight when dried by a gentle heat; and the dry starch that can be separated from 2,300 kilogrammes, the produce of half a hectare of ground, would hardly equal the quantity furnished by 800 kilogrammes of wheat. It is the same with the fruit of the ba

nana, which before its maturity, even in the state in which it is very farinaceous, contains much more water and sugary pulp than the seeds of gramina. We have seen that the same extent of ground in a favourable climate will yield 106,000 kilogrammes of bananas, 2,400 kilogrammes of tuberous roots, and 800 kilogrammes of wheat. These quantities bear no proportion to the number of individuals which can be maintained by these different kinds of cultivation on the same extent of ground. The aqueous mucilage which the banana contains, and the tuberous root of the solanum, possess undoubted nutritive properties. The farinaceous pulp, such as is presented by nature, yields undoubtedly more aliment than the starch which is separated from it by art. But the weights alone do not indicate the absolute quantities of nutritive matter; and to show the amount of the aliment which the cultivation of the musa yields on the same space of ground to man more than the cultivation of wheat, we ought rather to calculate according to the mass of vegetable substance necessary to satisfy a full-grown person. According to this last principle, and the fact is very curious, we find that in a very fertile country a demi hectare, or legal arpent*, cultivated with bananas of the large species (platano arton), is capable of maintaining 50 individuals; when the same arpent in

* 54,998 square feet. Trans.

Europe would only yield annually, supposing the eighth grain 576 kilogrammes* of flour, a quanitity not equal to the subsistence of two individuals t. Accordingly, a European newly arrived in the torrid zone is struck with nothing so much as the extreme smallness of the spots under cultivation round a cabin which contains a numerous family of Indians.

The ripe fruit of the musa, when exposed to the sun, is preserved like our figs. The skin becomes black and takes a particular odour, which resembles that of smoaked ham. The fruit in this state is called platano passado, and becomes an object of commerce in the province of Michuacan. This dry banana is an aliment of an agreeable taste, and extremely healthy. But those Europeans who newly arrive consider the ripe fruit of the platano arton, newly gathered, as very ill to digest. This opinion is very ancient, for Pliny relates that Alexander gave orders to his soldiers to touch none of the bananas which grow on the banks of the Hyphasus. Meal is extracted from the musa by cutting the green fruit into slices, drying it in the sun on a slope, and pounding it

* 1,271lb. avoird. Trans.

We have calculated on the following principles: 100 kilogrammes of wheat yield 72 kilogrammes of flour, and 16 kilogrammes of flour are convertible into 21 kilogrammes of bread. The maintenance of one individual is computed at 547 kilogrammes (1207lb. avoird.) annually.