The Banana,[160] like the Bamboo and most of the palms, is a cosmopolitan plant throughout the tropic world. Its native habitat is supposed to be Asia. The Oriental Christians have a tradition that this tree, which they call the _Lignum Vitæ_, was that whose fruit was forbidden to our first parents. Hence the name of _Musa paradisiaca_, given by botanists to one of the two species of the genus; the other is the Banana of the wise men, _Musa sapientum_. However this may be, it is certain that if the use of the banana was at any time interdicted to man, the prohibition has been annulled for many generations; and its fruits form one of the most wholesome and most general articles of food in tropical countries. Although the wild banana maintains its place honourably in the forests of these regions, it is not a tree, but an herbaceous plant. It propagates itself through its suckers, and its stem perishes immediately after fructification. Its mode of vegetation is analogous to that of the Liliaceæ. From a bulbous and fleshy platform issue, beneath, its fibrous roots; above, enormous leaves, often nearly a yard wide and two to three yards long. The petioles of these leaves are adhesive. By folding themselves one over another, and successively drying up, they grow into a stem which sometimes attains the dimensions of the trunk of an ordinary tree (about seven feet) and the stature of twelve to sixteen feet, and which is traversed throughout its centre by a stalk springing from the bulb. This stalk rises again several inches above the terminal leaf, then bends, sinks towards the ground, and terminates in a stem which carries at its extremity the male flowers, and at its base the female flowers, then the fruit. The latter, collected in clusters of twelve to fourteen, are elongated, of a prismatic triangular form, enveloped in a rind, green at first, then yellow, and internally consist of a soft, feculent, sugary pulp, very nutritious, and agreeable to the taste. In its native clime the banana is born, grows, flourishes, fructifies, and dies in the space of twelve or eighteen months. In the climates most akin to ours, and in our European gardens, its development is not only on a smaller scale, but occupies a longer period, and it has been known to reach the age of ten or a dozen years. [Illustration: THE BANYAN TREE (_Ficus Indica_).] By the side of these weak-stemmed plants, with their soft and spongy contexture, grow hosts of robust trees, whose timber is compact and sometimes exceedingly hard, and whose branches are of immense span. My readers will probably remember the lines in which Southey so admirably describes one of the most majestic and most singular of these: the Banyan, or Indian Fig-tree (_Ficus Indica_),[161] also designated the "Multiplying Fig-tree," the "Admirable Fig-tree," and "Tree of Life." The passage will bear transcription:[162]--