Sago, and starchy matter allied to it, is obtained from many palms. It is contained in the cellular tissue of the stem, and is separated by bruising and elutriation. From the soft stem of Cycas circinalis, a kind of sago is produced in the East and West Indies. The finest is, however, procured from the stems of Sagus lævis (S. inermis, of Roxburgh), a native of Borneo and Sumatra; and Arenga saccharifera, or Gomutus saccharifus, of Rumphius. The Saguerus Rumphii, or Metroxylon Sagus, which is found in the Eastern Islands of the Indian Ocean, yields a feculent matter. After the starchy substance is washed out of the stems of these palms, it is then granulated so as to form sago. The last-mentioned palm also furnishes a large supply of sugar. Sago as well as sugar, and a kind of palm wine, are procured from Caryota urens.

In China sago is obtained from Rhapis flabelliformis, a dwarfish palm; and some sago is made from it for native use in Travancore, Mysore, and Wynaad, and the jungles in the East Indies.

The trunk of the sago palm is five or six feet round, and it grows to the height of about 20 feet. It can only be propagated by seed. It flourishes best in bogs and swampy marshes; a good plantation being often a bog, knee deep. The pith producing the sago is seldom of use till the tree is fourteen or fifteen years old; and the tree does not live longer than thirty years. Mr. Crawfurd says there are four varieties of this palm; the cultivated, the wild, one distinguished by long spines on the branches, and a fourth destitute of these spines, and called by the natives female sago. This and the cultivated species afford the best farina; the spiny variety, which has a slender trunk, and the wild tree, yield but an inferior quality of sago. The farinaceous matter afforded by each plant is very considerable, 500 lbs. being a frequent quantity, while 300 lbs. may be taken as the common average produce of each tree.

At so great a distance it is difficult to decide as to which of these trees really produce the ordinary sagos of commerce, for there are several kinds. Planche, in an excellent memoir on the sagos, has described six species, which he distinguishes by the names of the places from which they come. Preferring to classify them according to their characters, M. Mayet distinguishes only three species.

The first he denominates Ancient sago, which comes from different parts, and varies much in color. It comprehends—1st, Maldivian sago of Planche, in spherical globules, of two or three millimetres in diameter, translucid, of an unequal pinkish white color, very hard and insipid. 2nd, New Guinea sago, of Planche, in rather smaller globules, of a bright red color on one side, and white on the other. 3rd. Grey sago of the Moluccas or brown sago of the English; of unequal globules, from one to three millimetres in diameter, opaque, of a dull grey color on one side, and whitish on the other. This grey color probably arises from long keeping and humidity. 4th. Large grey sago of the Moluccas, exactly resembling No. 3, only that the globules are from four to eight millimetres in diameter. 5th. Fine white sago of the Moluccas; entirely resembling No. 3, only that it is purely white, owing to the complete edulcoration of the fecula of which it is made.

Whatever may be the places of origin of these sagos, they all possess the following characters—

Rounded globules, generally spherical, all isolated, very hard, elastic, and difficult to break or powder. The globules put into water, generally swell to twice their original size, but do not adhere together.

Second sage.—This species corresponds with the pinkish sago of the Moluccas of Planche. It is in very small globules, less regular than those of the "first sago," and sometimes stuck together to the number of two or three. Soaked in water, it swells to double its volume.

Third Species.—Tapioca sago.—-This name has been applied to a species of sago now abundant in commerce, because it bears the same relation to the ancient or first sago, and even to the preceding sago, that tapioca bears to "Moussache," which is the fecula of the manioc, Janipha manihot (Manihot utilissima).

Bennet, in his work on "Ceylon and its Capabilities," (1843), states that sago is procured from the granulated pith of the talipot palm, Corypha umbraculifera.

The Sagus Rumphii, Willdenow, and S. farinifera, Gaertner.—Before maturity, and previous to the formation of the fruit, the stem consists of a thin hard wall, about two inches thick, and of an enormous volume of tissue (commonly termed the medulla or pith), from which the farina or sago is obtained. As the fruit forms, the farinaceous medulla disappears, and when the tree, attains full maturity, the stem is no more than a hollow shell. Sago occurs in commerce in two states, pulverulent and granulated. 1. The meal or flour as imported in the form of a fine amylaceous powder. It is whitish, with a buffy or reddish tint. Its odor is faint, but somewhat unpleasant and musty. 2. Granulated sago is of two kinds, pearl and common brown. The former occurs in small hard grains, not exceeding in size that of a pin's head, inodorous, and having little taste. They have a brownish or pinkish yellow tint, and are somewhat translucent. By the aid of a solution of chloride of lime they can be bleached, and rendered perfectly white. The dealers, it is said, pay £7 per ton for bleaching it. Common sago occurs in larger grains, about the size of pearl barley, which are brownish white.

Sago is an article of exportation to Europe, and is also shipped to India, principally Bengal, and to China. It is in its granulated form that it is usually sent abroad. The best sago is the produce of Siak, on the north coast of Sumatra. This is of a light brown color, the grains large, and not easily broken. The sago of Borneo is the next in value; it is whiter, but more friable. The produce of the Moluccas, though greatest in quantity, is of the smallest estimation. The cost of granulated sago, from the hands of the grower or producer, was, according to Mr. Crawfurd, only a dollar a picul. It fetches in the London market—common pearl, 20s. to 26s. the cwt., sago flour, 20s. the cwt. The Chinese of Malacca and Singapore have invented a process by which they refine sago, so as to give it a fine pearly lustre, and it is from thence we now principally derive our supplies of this article. The exports from Singapore in 1847 exceeded 6½ million pounds, but are now much larger.

A considerable quantity of sago is exported from Singapore in the state of flour. The whole quantity made and exported there exceeds, on the average, 2,500 tons annually. The quantity shipped from this entrepot is shown by the annexed returns, nearly all of which was grown and manufactured in the settlement. The estimated value for export is set down at 14s. per picul of 1¼ cwt.

Imports of sago into the United Kingdom, and quantity retained for home consumption:—

THE BREAD-FRUIT TREE.

A. integrifoliais the Jack or Jacca, the fruit of which attains a large size, sometimes weighing 30 lbs., but is inferior in quality to the bread-fruit.

The nuts or fruit of Brosimum Alicastrum, an evergreen shrub, native of Jamaica, are nutritious and agreeable articles of food. When boiled with salt fish, pork or beef, they have frequently been the support of the negroes and poorer sorts of white people in times of scarcity, and proved a wholesome and not unpleasant food; when roasted it eats something like our common chesnut, and is called bread-nut.

Kafir Bread.—According to Thunberg, the Hottentots being very little acquainted with agriculture, or with the use of the cerealia, and subsisting principally upon wild bulbs and fruits, obtain food also from Encephalartos caffer, a species of Zamia, with a cylindrical trunk, the thickness of a man's body, and about seven feet high. Having cut down a tree, they took out the pith, that nearly fills its trunk, and which abounds in mucilage and an amylaceous fluid; after keeping this for some time buried under ground in the skin of an animal, they reduced it by pounding and kneading into a kind of paste; and then baked it in hot ashes, in the form of round cakes, nearly an inch thick. The Dutch colonists, in consequence of this practice of the natives, called the plant brood-boon, which signifies literally bread tree.

THE PLANTAIN AND BANANA.

The several varieties of the edible plantain which are known and cultivated throughout the West Indies, Africa, and in the East are all reducible to two classes, viz., the Plantain and the Banana (Musa Paradisiacaand sapientum). The difference between these two plants is even so slight as to be scarcely specific; it is therefore most probable that there was originally but one stock, from which they have, by cultivation and change of locality, been derived.

The tiger plantain (M. maculata) and the black ditto (M. sylvestris) are cultivated in Jamaica. The whole of the species and varieties of the tribe are what are called polygamous monœcious plants, each individual tree bearing the male and female organs of reproduction.

It is, therefore, necessary to determine with exactness, if possible, whether the Plantain or Banana, (whichever be the parent stock) exists anywhere at present, or has been known to have existed as a perfect plant, that is bearing fertile seeds; or, whether it has always existed in the imperfect state, that is, incapable of being procreated by seed, the only state in which it at present exists in our colonies.

A great diminution in the cultivation of the plantain has been occasioned in British Guiana by this blight or disease, which first made its destructive appearance in Essequibo, upwards of thirty years ago, where its ravages increased with such fatal intensity as to render the profitable growth of the plant almost hopeless; and up to this hour no one has been able to discover the immediate or remote cause of this extraordinary vegetable endemic; whether arising from the action of insects among the sheathes of the petioles of the leaves, or in the soil, or from organic decay of the plant, remains without solution. The last-named cause seems to be rejected, by the fact that the fructification of the plant is as healthy and abundant in parts of the colony where the blight does not prevail, both in number and size of the fruit upon the spike, as at any former period. On the east coast of Demerara, both the plantain and banana have been grown for more than twenty years upon the same land, without any attack of the disease, and without any extraneous manure or even lime having been applied, and the plants still exhibit great luxuriance, and produce their former weight of fruit.

The foliage of the plantain affords food and bedding, and is used for thatch, making paper, and basket making; and from its petioles is obtained a fine and durable thread. The tops of the young plants are eaten as a delicate vegetable; the fermented juice of the trunk produces an agreeable wine.

The abundance and excellence of the nutritive food which the plants of this valuable genus supply are well known; but of the numerous uses to which they are applied I may mention, the following:—

The fruit is served up both raw and stewed; slices fried are also considered a delicacy. Plantains are sometimes boiled and eaten with salt meat, and pounded and made into puddings, and used in various other ways. In their ripe state these fruits contain much starchy matter. From their spurious stems, the fibres of the spiral vessels may be pulled out in such quantity as to be used for tinder. M. textilis yields a fibre which is used in India in the manufacture of fine muslins, and the coarser woody tissue is exported in large quantities from Manila, under the name of white rope or Manila hemp. Horses, cattle, swine, and other domestic animals are fed upon the fruit, leaves, and succulent trunks.

Although from the extensive plantain walks in our colonies—which are seldom cultivated with a garden-like care—so large an average proportion may not be obtained as twenty times the production of wheat in Europe, yet I have had practical experience of the prodigious quantity of farinaceous matter obtainable from an acre of tolerably well-cultivated plantains, and no esculent plant requires less labor in its culture upon land suitable for its production. They are readily increased by suckers, which the old plants produce in abundance.

Lindley enumerates ten species of Musa, some of which grow to the height of 25 or 30 feet, but that valuable species M. Cavendishii, does not grow more than four or five feet high.

The bananas of the family of the Musaceæ, appear to be natives of the southern portion of the Asiatic continent (R. Brown, "Bot. of Congo," p. 51). Transplanted at an unknown epoch into the Indian Archipelago and Africa, they have spread also into the, New World, and in general into all intertropical countries, sometimes before the arrival of Europeans.

According to Humboldt it affords, in a given extent of ground, forty-four times more nutritive matter than the potato, and 133 times more than wheat. These figures must be considered as only approximative, since nothing is more difficult than to estimate the nutritive qualities of different aliments.

Musa paradisiaca is cultivated in Syria, to latitude 34 deg. Humboldt says it ceases to yield fruit at a height of 3,000 feet, where the mean annual temperature is 68 deg., and where, probably, the heat of summer is deficient.

The banana seems, however, to be found no higher than 4,600 feet in a state of perfection.

No fruit is so easily cultivated as are the varieties of the plantain. There is hardly a cottage in the tropics that is not partly shaded by them; and it is successfully grown under other fruit trees, although it is independent of shelter. Its succulent roots and dew-attracting leaves render it useful in keeping the ground moist during the greatest heats. The plantain may be deemed the most valuable of fruits, since it will, in some measure, supply the place of grain in time of scarcity. To the negroes in the West Indian Islands the plantain is invaluable, and, like bread to the Europeans, is with them denominated the staff of life. In Jamaica, Demerara, Trinidad, and other principal colonies, many thousand acres are planted with these trees.

The vegetation of this tree is so rapid that if a line of thread be drawn across, and on a level with the top of one of the leaves, when it begins to expand, it will be seen, in the course of an hour, to have grown nearly an inch. The fruit when ripe is of a pale yellow, about a foot in length and two inches thick, and is produced in bunches so large as each to weigh 40 lbs. and upwards.

In the Straits' settlements of the East, the following are the most approved varieties:—The royal plantain, which fruits in eight months; one which bears in a year, the milk plantain, the downy plantain, and the golden plantain or banana. A species termed gindy has been lately imported from Madras, where it is in great request. It has this advantage over the other kinds, that it can be stewed down like an apple while they remain tough.

The Malays allege that they can produce new varieties, by planting three shoots of different sorts together, and by cutting the shoots down to the ground three successive times, when they have reached the height of nine or ten inches.

About 144 suckers of the plantain are set on an orlong (1⅓ acres), each of which spreads into a group of six or eight stems, of about six inches to one foot in diameter, which yield each a bunch of fruit, and are then cut down, when fresh shoots succeed. In very rich soils the plant will continue to bear for twenty years, but otherwise it is dug up after the seventh or eighth year. The cost of cultivating 100 orlongs of land exclusively with plantains, will be nearly 2,000 Spanish dollars until produce be obtained. About 43,200 bunches may be had afterwards yearly, which might give a return of 2,160 dollars, or, deducting the cost of cultivation and original expenses, a profit per annum of 1,450 dollars.

The plantain has frequently been suggested as an article of export from our colonies. A few bunches are occasionally brought over by the Royal West India Mail Company's steamers running to Southampton, but more as a curiosity than as articles of commerce.

In its ripe state no unexceptionable and sufficiently cheap method of preserving it has yet been suggested.

In some districts of Mexico it is, indeed, dried in the sun, and in this state forms a considerable article of internal commerce under the name of "plantado pasado."

It is sometimes so abundant and cheap in Demerara, Jamaica, Trinidad, and other of our colonies, that it might, if cut and dried, in its green state, be exported with advantage.

It is in the unripe state that it is so largely used by the peasantry of the colonies as an article of food. It has always been believed to be highly nutritive, but Dr. Shier states that, in any sample of the dried plantain which he analysed, he could not find a larger amount than 88 per cent of nitrogen, which corresponds with about 5½ per cent. of proteine compounds.

Plantain meal is prepared by stripping off the husk of the plantain, slicing the core, and drying it the sun. When thoroughly dry it is powdered and sifted. It is known among the Creoles of the West Indies under the name of Conquin tay. It has a fragrant odour, acquired in drying, somewhat resembling fresh hay or tea. It is largely employed as the food of infants, children, and invalids. As food for children and convalescents, it would probably be much esteemed in Europe, and it deserves a trial on account of its fragrance, and its being exceedingly easy of digestion. In respect of nutritiveness, it deserves a preference over all the pure starches on account of the proteine compounds it contains.

The plantain meal would probably be best and freshest were the sliced and dried plantain cores exported, leaving the grinding and sifting to be done in Europe. The flavor of the meal depends a good deal on the rapidity with which the slices are dried; hence the operation is only fitted for dry weather, unless indeed, when there was occasion for it, resource were had to a kiln or stove. Above all, the plantain must not be allowed to approach too closely to yellowness or ripeness, otherwise it becomes impossible to dry it. The color of the meal is injured when steel knives are used in husking or slicing, but silver or nickel blades do not injure the color. On the large scale a machine, on the principle of the turnip slicer, might be employed. The husking could be greatly facilitated by a very simple machine. Were the plantain meal to come into use in England, and bear a price in any way approaching to that of Bermuda arrowroot, it would become an extensive and very profitable export. Full-sized and well-filled bunches give 60 per cent. of core to 40 of husk and top-stem, but in general it would be found that the core did not much exceed 50 per cent., and the fresh core will yield 40 per cent. of dry meal, so that from 20 to 25 per cent. of meal is obtained from the plantain, or 5 lbs. from an average bunch of 25 lbs.; and an acre of plantain walk of average quality, producing during the year 450 such bunches, would yield a ton and 10 lbs. of meal, which, at the price of arrowroot, namely, 1s. per lb., would be a gross return of £112 10s. per acre. A new plantain walk would give twice as much. Even supposing the meal not to command over half the price of arrowroot, it would still form an excellent outlet for plantains whenever, from any cause, the price in the colony sank unusually low.

The plantain grows in profusion between the tropics in all parts of the world; but as it is an object to have the London market available for the prepared fibre, the following places may be mentioned as best calculated to produce a good and constant supply, viz:—the West India Colonies, the British Colonies in Africa, the South American Republics, along the Mosquito shore, and other places on the Continent of America, including Porto Rico, Hayti, and Cuba. The advantages to the paper manufacturer in employing the prepared fibre instead of rags, will be numerous, for the fibre is equal in texture, clean, and aromatic; whilst rags are dirty, full of vermin, and very often pestilential.

A large stock of the plantain can always be secured, without fear of its being injured by keeping. The paper will be superior to that made of rags, and the process of making it will be more economical, inasmuch as the sorting of the material will not be required. Another advantage is, that a new article of commerce will be opened for the benefit of the colonial shipping interests, and a stimulus will be given to the cultivation of a fruit which is the favorite food of large masses of the population.

The following is a "specification" of articles requisite for making three tons of prepared fibre in a day:—

Four wooden boilers lined with lead, in the form of coolers, 7 feet deep by 6 in diameter. One hydraulic press, from 400 to 500 tons. One stout screw press, to compress the fibre before it is submitted to the hydraulic press. One iron mill with horizontal cylinders. Six waggons; twenty mules. Utensils, such as spatulas, cutlasses, hoes, rakes, &c. &c. One lever, to take out the fibre from the boilers. One steam boiler, equal to 12-horse power, to steam the four wooden boilers.

It being very desirable that the works should be in the immediate neighbourhood of a river, the machinery should be worked by water-power; but if this mode should be inconvenient, a steam engine in addition must be obtained, of about 8 or 10-horse power; or if one steam engine of 20-horse power were employed, it would be sufficient for all purposes. Thirty men are required to make three tons of fibre in a day.

Buildings.—A store, 100 feet long by 25 feet broad, in wood, covered with straw, to contain the dried fibre and the presses. One open shed of the same dimensions, covered with straw for the boilers.

The estimated expense in cultivating one quarree, or 5 1-5th English acres, in plantains, will be £30, as the work can be easily performed by one laborer in 300 days, at 2s. sterling per day.

A quarree will produce 18 tons of mill fibre, the cost of the preparation of which is as follows:—

Thus, making the total expense of producing 18 tons of fibre £174, or £9 13s. 4d. per ton. In 1848 Manila rope, or plantain fibre of good quality, was worth £38 per ton.

A correspondent in Jamaica, who has devoted much attention to the subject, has furnished me with some very valuable detailed information, the most complete and practical that has ever yet appeared:—