As the seeds of the cultivated plantain and banana never or very rarely come to maturity, they can only be propagated by suckers. ‘In both hemispheres,’ says Humboldt, ‘as far as tradition or history reaches, we find plantains cultivated in the tropical zone. It is as certain that African slaves have introduced, in the course of centuries, varieties of the banana into America, as that before the discovery of Columbus the plantain was cultivated by the aboriginal Indians. ‘These plants are the ornaments of humid countries. Like the farinaceous cereals of the north, they accompany man from the first infancy of his civilisation. Semitical traditions place their original home on the banks of the Euphrates; others, with greater probability, at the foot of the Himalayas. According to the Greek mythology, the plains of Enna were the fortunate birthplace of the cereals; but while the monotonous fields of the latter add but little to the beauty of the northern regions, the tropical husbandman multiplies in the banana one of the noblest forms of vegetable life.’ The Musaceæ are not only useful to man by their mealy, wholesome, and agreeable fruits, but also by the fibres of their long leaf-stalks. Some species furnish filaments for the finest muslin, and the coarse fibres of the _Musa textilis_, known in trade under the name of Manilla hemp, serve for the preparation of very durable cordage. To the same family of plants belongs also the traveller-tree of Madagascar (_Ravenala speciosa_), one of those wonderful sources of refreshment which Nature has provided for the thirsty wanderer in the wilderness. The foot-stalks of the elliptical, alternate leaves embrace the trunk with broad sheathes, in which the dew trickling from their surface is collected. Thus the ravenala, the hollow baobab, the pitcher-plant, and the juicy cactuses, all answer a similar purpose, and it is impossible to say which of them is most to be admired.