In the land of bananas, cats, dogs and pigs, mules, horses and cattle, parrots, babies and all other domestic animals thrive on this perfect nature-food, when they can get it. I have seen an Indian woman pry open with her fingers the jaws of a baby peccary, and with a gruel of green bananas choke off its incessant, rasping cry of “ma, ma!” And the next instant she put that same calabash of gruel to the lips of her own babe of three or four months. I’ve seen other Indians feed infant tapir, suckling jaguar, skinny squabs of parrots and very young monkeys on such pap, which those folk call wabool. I, myself, have safely carried abandoned cardinals through from their infant days of a beggarly few pin feathers to those of full regimentals of brilliant scarlet and epaulets of jet; and they were as overflowing with joyful song and saucy happiness as they could have been had worms and bugs been the chief of their diet every day of their lives, instead of the bananas on which they had been largely fed. Why not, indeed, when cakes and beer, brandy and sugar, pies, puddings and sauce, and many another thing good for man to take for his stomach’s sake, are made from bananas. So, too, are paper and laces, brushes and cloth, and cordage enough to pull up the earth by its roots, if only we had a place to hook the tackle. [Illustration: HARVESTING BANANAS] When he has set out an acre or two of bananas, the planter need have no fears for the future. He has ample insurance against such privations as come from illness, accident or old age: and they who by a little labor pay for such insurance share each day its material benefits. No need for them to die that others may enjoy the blessings of such wise provision; nor need the planter toil with hoe or spade, cultivator or plow. It may be he will slash away with machete such vine or sapling, grass or weed as happens to obstruct his path; but as a whole he interferes as little as possible with the operations of kindly Mother Nature. She is more than ready to do his work: he is willing to let her do it. He whose acre of bananas has been well planted has on it 225 hills, or 900 stalks. Each stalk will give him a bunch which, on rich, new ground, should weigh 60 pounds, say 54,000 pounds each 12 or 14 months. That is the theory. The fact seems to be that the average yield is really 175 to 300 full bunches to the acre per annum, say a mean of 270 bunches weighing about 16,000 pounds. The average yield reported all along the Caribbean shore and from Jamaica, during a dozen years, equaled 270.95 full bunches an acre per annum.