=BANANA.=--The Banana (_Musa sapientum_) and the Plantain (_M. paradisiaca_) are so closely related, as to be generally spoken of together. The Banana has been well designated the king of all fruit, and the greatest boon bestowed by Providence on the inhabitants of hot countries. According to Gerarde, who calls it in his Herbal, Adam’s Apple Tree, it was supposed in his time by the Grecians and Christians inhabiting Syria, as well as by the Jews, to be that tree of whose fruit Adam partook at Eve’s solicitation--the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, planted by the Lord Himself in the midst of the Garden of Eden. It has also been supposed that the Grapes brought by the Israelites’ spies to Moses out of the Holy Land, were in reality the fruit of the Banana-tree.----In the Canary Islands, the Banana is never cut across with a knife because it then exhibits a representation of the Crucifixion. Gerarde refers to this mark, remarking that the fruit “pleaseth and entiseth a man to eate liberally thereof, by a certaine entising sweetnesse it yields; in which fruit, if it be cut according to the length, oblique, transverse, or any other way, whatsoever, may be seene the shape and forme of a crosse, with a man fastened thereto. My selfe have seene the fruit, and cut it in pieces, which was brought me from Aleppo, in pickle: the crosse, I might perceive, as the form of a spred-Egle in the root of Ferne; but the man I leave to be sought for by those which have better eies and judgement than my selfe.”----A certain sect of Brahmans, called Yogis, place all their food in the leaves of the Plantain, or Apple of Paradise, and other large leaves; these they use dry, never green, for they say that the green leaves have a soul in them; and so it would be sinful. =BANYAN TREE.=--The Indian Fig-tree (_Ficus Indica_), of which one of the Sanscrit names is _Bahupâda_, or the Tree of Many Feet, is one of the sacred trees of India, and is remarkable for its vast size and the singularity of its growth: it throws out from its lateral branches shoots which, as soon as they reach the earth, take root, till, in course of time, a single tree extends itself to a considerable grove. Pliny described the Banyan with great accuracy, and Milton has rendered his description almost literally: “Branching so broad along, that in the ground The bending twigs take root, and daughters grow About the mother tree; a pillared shade, High over-arched, with echoing walks between. There oft the Indian herdsman, shunning heat, Shelters in cool, and tends his pasturing herds At loop-holes cut through thickest shade.”