ith, much as the
Jamaica negroes go on using articles of European manufacture about whose
origin they are so ridiculously ignorant that one young woman once asked
me whether it was really true that cotton handkerchiefs were dug up out
of the ground over in England. Some dim confusion between coal or iron
and Manchester piece-goods seemed to have taken firm possession of her
infantile imagination.

That is why I have thought that a treatise De Banana might not, perhaps,
be wholly without its usefulness to the modern English reading world.
After all, a food-stuff which supports hundreds of millions among our
beloved tropical fellow-creatures ought to be very dear to the heart of
a nation which governs (and annually kills) more black people, taken in
the mass, than all the other European powers put together. We have
introduced the blessings of British rule--the good and well-paid
missionary, the Remington rifle, the red-cotton pocket-handkerchief, and
the use of 'the liquor called rum'--into so many remote corners of the
tropical world that it is high time we should begin in return to learn
somewhat about fetiches and fustic, Jamaica and jaggery, bananas and
Buddhism. We know too little still about our colonies and dependencies.
'Cape Breton an island!' cried King George's Minister, the Duke of
Newcastle, in the well-known story, 'Cape Breton an island! Why, so it
is! God bless my soul! I must go and tell the King that Cape Breton's
an island.' That was a hundred years ago; but only the other day the
Board of Trade placarded all our towns and villages with a flaming
notice to the effect that the Colorado beetle had made its appearance at
'a town in Canada called Ontario,' and might soon be expected to arrive
at Liverpool by Cunard steamer. The right honourables and other high
mightinesses who put forth the notice in question were evidently unaware
that Ontario is a province as big as England, including in its borders
Toronto, Ottawa, Kingston, London, Hamilton, and other large and
flourishing towns. Apparently, in spite of competitive examinations, the
schoolmaster is still abroad in the Government offices.

GO TO THE ANT

In the market-place at Santa Fe, in Mexico, peasant women from the
neighbouring villages bring in for sale trayfuls of living ants, each
about as big and round as a large white currant, and each entirely
filled with honey or grape sugar, much appreciated by the ingenuous
Mexican youth as an ex