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It is indigenous here, and wild, but never bears seeds, and is propagated solely by suckers, which spring up when the parent plant has fruited, or by cuttings. Go to the palm-house, find the Musa sapientum, magnify it ten times, glorify it immeasurably, and you will have a laggard idea of the banana groves of Hilo.

The Greeks of Alexander's expedition saw it in India, where 'sages reposed beneath its shade and ate of its fruit, whence the botanical name, Musa sapientum. As the sages in question were lazy Brahmans, always celebrated for their immense capacity for doing nothing, the report, as quoted by Pliny, is no doubt an accurate one.

Nil dulcius est bene quam munita tenere Edita doctrina sapientum templa serena, Despicere unde queas alios passimque videre Errare atque viam palantes quaerere vitae. The learned are to hold the true doctrine; the unlearned are to be taught its morally beneficial contrary.

God hath said it and performed it ever: "Perdam sapientiam sapientum"; "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise." But what of all this? and to what end do we lay before the eyes of the living, the fall and fortunes of the dead: seeing the world is the same that it hath been; and the children of the present time, will still obey their parents?

Migne, vol. 171, pp. 1698-1699: Femina dulce malum, pariter favus atque venenum, Melle linens gladium cor confodit et sapientum. Quis suasit primo vetitum gustare parenti? Femina. Quis patrem natas vitiare coegit? Femina. Quis fortem spoliatum crine peremit? Femina. Quis iusti sacrum caput ense recidit? Femina. etc., ad lib.

An immense god-send to the Gaboon, it is well known to be the most productive of all food, 100 square yards of it giving annually nearly 2,000 kilogrammes of food far more nutritious than the potato. Here it is the musa sapientum, the banana de Soa Thome, which has crossed over to the Brazil, and which is there known by its sharper leaves and fruit, softer and shorter than the indigenous growth.

This, too, by a similar process, has been traced to India, appearing first in Europe at the beginning of the thirteenth century in the Latin Historia Septem Sapientum Romae, by Dame Jehans, monk in the Abbey of Haute Selve. Here, too, we have a Hebrew, an Arabic, and a Persian version; which last came avowedly from a Sanscrit original, though that original has not yet been discovered.

I maintain that if Banana, bananæ, &c., is not already a Latin noun of the first declension, why then it ought to be, and it shall be in future. Linnæus indeed thought otherwise. He too assigned the plant and fruit to the first declension, but handed it over to none other than our earliest acquaintance in the Latin language, Musa. He called the banana Musa sapientum.

The worst state of man is that wherein he loses the knowledge and government of himself. And 'tis said amongst other things upon this subject, that, as the must fermenting in a vessel, works up to the top whatever it has in the bottom, so wine, in those who have drunk beyond measure, vents the most inward secrets: "Tu sapientum Curas et arcanum jocoso Consilium retegis Lyaeo."

Matthew and the De puritate Ecclesiae in 1542; the De immensa Dei misericordia in 1558 and 1573; the Apophthegmata Graeciae sapientum in 12 editions between 1558 and 1599; the De praeparatione ad mortem in 1564 and 1786; and the Vidua Christiana in 1595.