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Show WHEBE THE BANANA GROWS. In South America the banana is not thought of as a luxury. In fact, it takes the place of tread and meat and vegetables among a large part of the people. Every garden has its banana patch, just as we have our indispensable indispensa-ble rows of potatoes. On the isthmus of Panama the cars pjn past hills covered from base to summit with the beautiful bro8d leaved plants, their great clusters of fruit hanging from the stems just under the leaves. The banana plant looks something like an immense calla IHy, Its etem is made up of the bases of the leaves, so sheathed or folded around each other and hardened as to sustain the weight of the mass of foliage above. It will in some localities locali-ties attain a height of twenty feet. hep two years old it bears fruit and then dies, but a number of young shoots spring up from the base of the old stem, so that it continually renews re-news Itself, and the farmer, who is utsualjy.an Indian or negro, has no trouble except to keep the wet da and the old withered trunks cleared away from the growing plant. Even the trunk is of use, for it contains a fiber ! almost as soft as silk, which can be woven into the most exquisite muslins. ' Indeed, some of the dainty India , muslins are made of this very fiber. |