Let it not for a moment be supposed, however, that I wish to treat the useful and ornamental17 banana with intentional18 disrespect. On the contrary, I cherish for it—at a distance—feelings of the highest esteem19 and admiration20. We are so parochial in our views, taking us as a species, that I dare say very few English people really know how immensely useful a plant is the common banana. To most of us it envisages21 itself merely as a curious tropical fruit, largely imported at Covent Garden, and a capital thing to stick on one of the tall dessert-dishes when you give a dinner-party, because it looks delightfully24 foreign, and just serves to balance the pine-apple at the opposite end of the hospitable25 mahogany. Perhaps such innocent readers will be surprised to learn that bananas and plantains supply the principal food-stuff of a far larger fraction of the human race than that which is supported by wheaten bread. They form the veritable staff of life to the inhabitants of both eastern and western tropics. What the potato is to the degenerate26 descendant of Celtic kings; what the oat is to the kilted Highlandman27; what rice is to the Bengalee, and Indian corn to the American negro, that is the muse13 of sages22 (I translate literally28 from the immortal29 Swede) to African savages30 and Brazilian slaves. Humboldt calculated that an acre of bananas would supply a greater quantity of solid food to hungry humanity than could possibly be extracted from the same extent of cultivated ground by any other known plant. So you see the question is no small one; to sing the praise of this Linn?an muse is a task well worthy31 of the Pierian muses.
Do you know the outer look and aspect of the banana plant? If not, then you have never voyaged to those delusive32 tropics. Tropical vegetation, as ordinarily understood by poets and painters, consists entirely33 of the coco-nut palm and the banana bush. Do you wish to paint a beautiful picture of a rich ambrosial34 tropical island, à la Tennyson—a summer isle35 of Eden lying in dark purple spheres of sea?—then you introduce a group of coco-nuts, whispering in odorous heights of even, in the very foreground of your pretty sketch36, just to let your public understand at a glance that these are the delicious poetical37 tropics. Do you desire to create an ideal paradise, à la Bernardin de St. Pierre, where idyllic38 Virginies die of pure modesty39 rather than appear before the eyes of their beloved but unwedded Pauls in a lace-bedraped peignoir?—then you strike the keynote by sticking in the middle distance a hut or cottage, overshadowed by the broad and graceful40 foliage41 of the picturesque42 banana. ('Hut' is a poor and chilly43 word for these glowing descriptions, far inferior to the pretty and high-sounding original chaumière.) That is how we do the tropics when we want to work upon the emotions of the reader. But it is all a delicate theatrical44 illusion; a trick of art meant to deceive and impose upon the unwary who have never been there, and would like to think it all genuine. In reality, nine times out of ten, you might cast your eyes casually45 around you in any tropical valley, and, if there didn't happen to be a native cottage with a coco-nut grove46 and banana patch anywhere in the neighbourhood, you would see nothing in the way of vegetation which you mightn't see at home any day in Europe. But what painter would ever venture to paint the tropics without the palm trees? He might just as well try to paint the desert without the camels, or to represent St. Sebastian without a sheaf of arrows sticking unperceived in the calm centre of his unruffled bosom47, to mark and emphasise48 his Sebastianic personality.
Still, I will frankly49 admit that the banana itself, with its practically almost identical relation, the plantain, is a real bit of tropical foliage. I confess to a settled prejudice against the tropics generally, but I allow the sunsets, the coco-nuts, and the bananas. The true stem creeps underground, and sends up each year an upright branch, thickly covered with majestic50 broad green leaves, somewhat like those of the canna cultivated in our gardens as 'Indian shot,' but far larger, nobler, and handsomer. They sometimes measure from six to ten feet in length, and their thick midrib and strongly marked diverging51 veins52 give them a very lordly and graceful appearance. But they are apt in practice to suffer much from the fury of the tropical storms. The wind rips the leaves up between the veins as far as the midrib in tangled53 tatters; so that after a good hurricane they look more like coco-nut palm leaves than like single broad masses of foliage as they ought properly to do. This, of course, is the effect of a gentle and balmy hurricane—a mere23 capful of wind that tears and tatters them. After a really bad storm (one of the sort when you tie ropes round your wooden house to prevent its falling bodily to pieces, I mean) the bananas are all actually blown down, and the crop for that season utterly54 destroyed. The apparent stem, being merely composed of the overlapping55 and sheathing56 leaf-stalks, has naturally very little stability; and the soft succulent trunk accordingly gives way forthwith at the slightest onslaught. This liability to be blown down in high winds forms the weak point of the plantain, viewed as a food-stuff crop. In the South Sea Islands, where there is little shelter, the poor Fijian, in cannibal days, often lost his one means of subsistence from this cause, and was compelled to satisfy the pangs58 of hunger on the plump persons of his immediate59 relatives. But since the introduction of Christianity, and of a dwarf61 stout62 wind-proof variety of banana, his condition in this respect, I am glad to say, has been greatly ameliorated.
By descent the banana bush is a developed tropical lily, not at all remotely allied63 to the common iris64, only that its flowers and fruit are clustered together on a hanging spike65, instead of growing solitary66 and separate as in the true irises67. The blossoms, which, though pretty, are comparatively inconspicuous for the size of the plant, show the extraordinary persistence68 of the lily type; for almost all the vast number of species, more or less directly descended69 from the primitive70 lily, continue to the very end of the chapter to have six petals71, six stamens, and three rows of seeds in their fruits or capsules. But practical man, with his eye always steadily72 fixed73 on the one important quality of edibility—the sum and substance to most people of all botanical research—has confined his attention almost entirely to the fruit of the banana. In all essentials (other than the systematically74 unimportant one just alluded75 to) the banana fruit in its original state exactly resembles the capsule of the iris—that pretty pod that divides in three when ripe, and shows the delicate orange-coated seeds lying in triple rows within—only, in the banana, the fruit does not open; in the sweet language of technical botany, it is an indehiscent capsule; and the seeds, instead of standing76 separate and distinct, as in the iris, are embedded77 in a soft and pulpy79 substance which forms the edible80 and practical part of the entire arrangement.
This is the proper appearance of the original and natural banana, before it has been taken in hand and cultivated by tropical man. When cut across the middle, it ought to show three rows of seeds, interspersed81 with pulp78, and faintly preserving some dim memory of the dividing wall which once separated them. In practice, however, the banana differs widely from this theoretical ideal, as practice often will differ from theory; for it has been so long cultivated and selected by man—being probably one of the very oldest, if not actually quite the oldest, of domesticated82 plants—that it has all but lost the original habit of producing seeds. This is a common effect of cultivation83 on fruits, and it is of course deliberately84 aimed at by horticulturists, as the seeds are generally a nuisance, regarded from the point of view of the eater, and their absence improves the fruit, as long as one can manage to get along somehow without them. In the pretty little Tangierine oranges (so ingeniously corrupted85 by fruiterers into mandarins) the seeds have almost been cultivated out; in the best pine-apples, and in the small grapes known in the dried state as currants, they have quite disappeared; while in some varieties of pears they survive only in the form of shrivelled, barren, and useless pips. But the banana, more than any other plant we know of, has managed for many centuries to do without seeds altogether. The cultivated sort, especially in America, is quite seedless, and the plants are propagated entirely by suckers.
Still, you can never wholly circumvent86 nature. Expel her with a pitchfork, tamen usque recurrit. Now nature has settled that the right way to propagate plants is by means of seedlings87. Strictly speaking, indeed, it is the only way; the other modes of growth from bulbs or cuttings are not really propagation, but mere reduplication by splitting, as when you chop a worm in two, and a couple of worms wriggle88 off contentedly89 forthwith in either direction. Just so when you divide a plant by cuttings, suckers, slips, or runners; the two apparent plants thus produced are in the last resort only separate parts of the same individual—one and indivisible, like the French Republic. Seedlings are absolutely distinct individuals; they are the product of the pollen90 of one plant and the ovules of another, and they start afresh in life with some chance of being fairly free from the hereditary91 taints92 or personal failings of either parent. But cuttings or suckers are only the same old plant over and over again in fresh circumstances, transplanted as it were, but not truly renovated93 or rejuvenescent. That is the real reason why our potatoes are now all going to—well, the same place as the army has been going ever since the earliest memories of the oldest officer in the whole service. We have gone on growing potatoes over and over again from the tubers alone, and hardly ever from seed, till the whole constitution of the potato kind has become permanently94 enfeebled by old age and dotage95. The eyes (as farmers call them) are only buds or underground branches; and to plant potatoes as we usually do is nothing more than to multiply the apparent scions96 by fission97. Odd as it may sound to say so, all the potato vines in a whole field are often, from the strict biological point of view, parts of a single much-divided individual. It is just as though one were to go on cutting up a single worm, time after time, as soon as he grew again, till at last the one original creature had multiplied into a whole colony of apparently98 distinct individuals. Yet, if the first worm happened to have the gout or the rheumatism99 (metaphorically speaking), all the other worms into which his compound personality had been divided would doubtless suffer from the same complaints throughout the whole of their joint100 lifetimes.
The banana, however, has very long resisted the inevitable101 tendency to degeneration in plants thus artificially and unhealthily propagated. Potatoes have only been in cultivation for a few hundred years; and yet the potato constitution has become so far enfeebled by the practice of growing from the tuber that the plants now fall an easy prey102 to potato fungus103, Colorado beetles105, and a thousand other persistent106 enemies. It is just the same with the vine—propagated too long by layers or cuttings, its health has failed entirely, and it can no longer resist the ravages107 of the phylloxera or the slow attacks of the vine-disease fungus. But the banana, though of very ancient and positively108 immemorial antiquity109 as a cultivated plant, seems somehow gifted with an extraordinary power of holding its own in spite of long-continued unnatural110 propagation. For thousands of years it has been grown in Asia in the seedless condition, and yet it springs as heartily111 as ever still from the underground suckers. Nevertheless, there must in the end be some natural limit to this wonderful power of reproduction, or rather of longevity112; for, in the strictest sense, the banana bushes that now grow in the negro gardens of Trinidad and Demerara are part and parcel of the very same plants which grew and bore fruit a thousand years ago in the native compounds of the Malay Archipelago.
In fact, I think there can be but little doubt that the banana is the very oldest product of human tillage. Man, we must remember, is essentially113 by origin a tropical animal, and wild tropical fruits must necessarily have formed his earliest food-stuffs. It was among them of course that his first experiments in primitive agriculture would be tried; the little insignificant114 seeds and berries of cold northern regions would only very slowly be added to his limited stock in husbandry, as circumstances pushed some few outlying colonies northward115 and ever northward toward the chillier117 unoccupied regions. Now, of all tropical fruits, the banana is certainly the one that best repays cultivation. It has been calculated that the same area which will produce thirty-three pounds of wheat or ninety-nine pounds of potatoes will produce 4,400 pounds of plantains or bananas. The cultivation of the various varieties in India, China, and the Malay Archipelago dates, says De Candolle, 'from an epoch118 impossible to realise.' Its diffusion119, as that great but very oracular authority remarks, may go back to a period 'contemporary with or even anterior120 to that of the human races.' What this remarkably121 illogical sentence may mean I am at a loss to comprehend; perhaps M. de Candolle supposes that the banana was originally cultivated by pre-human gorillas122; perhaps he merely intends to say that before men began to separate they sent special messengers on in front of them to diffuse123 the banana in the different countries they were about to visit. Even legend retains some trace of the extreme antiquity of the species as a cultivated fruit, for Adam and Eve are said to have reclined under the shadow of its branches, whence Linn?us gave to the sort known as the plantain the Latin name of Musa paradisiaca. If a plant was cultivated in Eden by the grand old gardener and his wife, as Lord Tennyson democratically styled them (before his elevation124 to the peerage), we may fairly conclude that it possesses a very respectable antiquity indeed.
The wild banana is a native of the Malay region, according to De Candolle, who has produced by far the most learned and unreadable work on the origin of domestic plants ever yet written. (Please don't give me undue125 credit for having heroically read it through out of pure love of science: I was one of its unfortunate reviewers.) The wild form produces seed, and grows in Cochin China, the Philippines, Ceylon, and Khasia. Like most other large tropical fruits, it no doubt owes its original development to the selective action of monkeys, hornbills, parrots and other big fruit-eaters; and it shares with all fruits of similar origin one curious tropical peculiarity126. Most northern berries, like the strawberry, the raspberry, the currant, and the blackberry, developed by the selective action of small northern birds, can be popped at once into the mouth and eaten whole; they have no tough outer rind or defensive127 covering of any sort. But big tropical fruits, which lay themselves out for the service of large birds or monkeys, have always hard outer coats, because they could only be injured by smaller animals, who would eat the pulp without helping128 in the dispersion of the useful seeds, the one object really held in view by the mother plant. Often, as in the case of the orange, the rind even contains a bitter, nauseous, or pungent129 juice, while at times, as in the pine-apple, the prickly pear, the sweet-sop, and the cherimoyer, the entire fruit is covered with sharp projections130, stinging hairs, or knobby protuberances, on purpose to warn off the unauthorised depredator. It was this line of defence that gave the banana in the first instance its thick yellow skin; and, looking at the matter from the epicure's point of view, one may say roughly that all tropical fruits have to be skinned before they can be eaten. They are all adapted for being cut up with a knife and fork, or dug out with a spoon, on a civilised dessert-plate. As for that most delicious of Indian fruits, the mango, it has been well said that the only proper way to eat it is over a tub of water, with a couple of towels hanging gracefully131 across the side.
The varieties of the banana are infinite in number, and, as in most other plants of ancient cultivation, they shade off into one another by infinitesimal gradations. Two principal sorts, however, are commonly recognised—the true banana of commerce, and the common plantain. The banana proper is eaten raw, as a fruit, and is allowed accordingly to ripen132 thoroughly133 before being picked for market; the plantain, which is the true food-stuff of all the equatorial region in both hemispheres, is gathered green and roasted as a vegetable, or, to use the more expressive134 West Indian negro phrase, as a bread-kind. Millions of human beings in Asia, Africa, America, and the islands of the Pacific Ocean live almost entirely on the mild and succulent but tasteless plantain. Some people like the fruit; to me personally it is more suggestive of a very flavourless over-ripe pear than of anything else in heaven or earth or the waters that are under the earth—the latter being the most probable place to look for it, as its taste and substance are decidedly watery135. Baked dry in the green state 'it resembles roasted chestnuts,' or rather baked parsnip; pulped136 and boiled with water it makes 'a very agreeable sweet soup,' almost as nice as peasoup with brown sugar in it; and cut into slices, sweetened, and fried, it forms 'an excellent substitute for fruit pudding,' having a flavour much like that of potatoes à la maítre d'hótel served up in treacle137.
Altogether a fruit to be sedulously avoided, the plantain, though millions of our spiritually destitute138 African brethren haven't yet for a moment discovered that it isn't every bit as good as wheaten bread and fresh butter. Missionary139 enterprise will no doubt before long enlighten them on this subject, and create a good market in time for American flour and Manchester piece-goods.
Though by origin a Malayan plant, there can be little doubt that the banana had already reached the mainland of America and the West India Islands long before the voyage of Columbus. When Pizarro disembarked upon the coast of Peru on his desolating140 expedition, the mild-eyed, melancholy141, doomed142 Peruvians flocked down to the shore and offered him bananas in a lordly dish. Beds composed of banana leaves have been discovered in the tombs of the Incas, of date anterior, of course, to the Spanish conquest. How did they get there? Well, it is clearly an absurd mistake to suppose that Columbus discovered America; as Artemus Ward116 pertinently143 remarked, the noble Red Indian had obviously discovered it long before him. There had been intercourse144 of old, too, between Asia and the Western Continent; the elephant-headed god of Mexico, the debased traces of Buddhism145 in the Aztec religion, the singular coincidences between India and Peru, all seem to show that a stream of communication, however faint, once existed between the Asiatic and American worlds. Garcilaso himself, the half-Indian historian of Peru, says that the banana was well known in his native country before the conquest, and that the Indians say 'its origin is Ethiopia.' In some strange way or other, then, long before Columbus set foot upon the low sandbank of Cat's Island, the banana had been transported from Africa or India to the Western hemisphere.
If it were a plant propagated by seed, one would suppose that it was carried across by wind or waves, wafted146 on the feet of birds, or accidentally introduced in the crannies of drift timber. So the coco-nut made the tour of the world ages before either of the famous Cooks—the Captain or the excursion agent—had rendered the same feat147 easy and practicable; and so, too, a number of American plants have fixed their home in the tarns148 of the Hebrides or among the lonely bogs149 of Western Galway. But the banana must have been carried by man, because it is unknown in the wild state in the Western Continent; and, as it is practically seedless, it can only have been transported entire, in the form of a root or sucker. An exactly similar proof of ancient intercourse between the two worlds is afforded us by the sweet potato, a plant of undoubted American origin, which was nevertheless naturalised in China as early as the first centuries of the Christian60 era. Now that we all know how the Scandinavians of the eleventh century went to Massachusetts, which they called Vineland, and how the Mexican empire had some knowledge of Accadian astronomy, people are beginning to discover that Columbus himself was after all an egregious150 humbug151.
In the old world the cultivation of the banana and the plantain goes back, no doubt, to a most immemorial antiquity. Our Aryan ancestor himself, Professor Max Müller's especial protégé, had already invented several names for it, which duly survive in very classical Sanskrit. The Greeks of Alexander's expedition saw it in India, where 'sages reposed152 beneath its shade and ate of its fruit, whence the botanical name, Musa sapientum.' As the sages in question were lazy Brahmans, always celebrated153 for their immense capacity for doing nothing, the report, as quoted by Pliny, is no doubt an accurate one. But the accepted derivation of the word Musa from an Arabic original seems to me highly uncertain; for Linn?us, who first bestowed154 it on the genus, called several other allied genera by such cognate155 names as Urania and Heliconia. If, therefore, the father of botany knew that his own word was originally Arabic, we cannot acquit156 him of the high crime and misdemeanour of deliberate punning. Should the Royal Society get wind of this, something serious would doubtless happen; for it is well known that the possession of a sense of humour is absolutely fatal to the pretensions157 of a man of science.
Besides its main use as an article of food, the banana serves incidentally to supply a valuable fibre, obtained from the stem, and employed for weaving into textile fabrics158 and making paper. Several kinds of the plantain tribe are cultivated for this purpose exclusively, the best known among them being the so-called manilla hemp159, a plant largely grown in the Philippine Islands. Many of the finest Indian shawls are woven from banana stems, and much of the rope that we use in our houses comes from the same singular origin. I know nothing more strikingly illustrative of the extreme complexity160 of our modern civilisation161 than the way in which we thus every day employ articles of exotic manufacture in our ordinary life without ever for a moment suspecting or inquiring into their true nature. What lady knows when she puts on her delicate wrapper, from Liberty's or from Swan and Edgar's, that the material from which it is woven is a Malayan plantain stalk? Who ever thinks that the glycerine for our chapped hands comes from Travancore coco-nuts, and that the pure butter supplied us from the farm in the country is coloured yellow with Jamaican annatto? We break a tooth, as Mr. Herbert Spencer has pointed162 out, because the grape-curers of Zante are not careful enough about excluding small stones from their stock of currants; and we suffer from indigestion because the Cape163 wine-grower has doctored his light Burgundies with Brazilian logwood and white rum, to make them taste like Portuguese164 port. Take merely this very question of dessert, and how intensely complicated it really is. The West Indian bananas keep company with sweet St. Michaels from the Azores, and with Spanish cobnuts from Barcelona. Dried fruits from Metz, figs165 from Smyrna, and dates from Tunis lie side by side on our table with Brazil nuts and guava jelly and damson cheese and almonds and raisins166. We forget where everything comes from nowadays, in our general consciousness that they all come from the Queen Victoria Street Stores, and any real knowledge of common objects is rendered every day more and more impossible by the bewildering complexity and variety, every day increasing, of the common objects themselves, their substitutes, adulterates, and spurious imitations. Why, you probably never heard of manilla hemp before, until this very minute, and yet you have been familiarly using it all your lifetime, while 400,000 hundredweights of that useful article are annually167 imported into this country alone. It is an interesting study to take any day a list of market quotations168, and ask oneself about every material quoted, what it is and what they do with it.
For example, can you honestly pretend that you really understand the use and importance of that valuable object of everyday demand, fustic? I remember an ill-used telegraph clerk in a tropical colony once complaining to me that English cable operators were so disgracefully ignorant about this important staple169 as invariably to substitute for its name the word 'justice' in all telegrams which originally referred to it. Have you any clear and definite notions as to the prime origin and final destination of a thing called jute, in whose sole manufacture the whole great and flourishing town of Dundee lives and moves and has its being? What is turmeric? Whence do we obtain vanilla170? How many commercial products are yielded by the orchids171? How many totally distinct plants in different countries afford the totally distinct starches172 lumped together in grocers' lists under the absurd name of arrowroot? When you ask for sago do you really see that you get it? and how many entirely different objects described as sago are known to commerce? Define the uses of partridge canes173 and cohune oil. What objects are generally manufactured from tucum? Would it surprise you to learn that English door-handles are commonly made out of coquilla nuts? that your wife's buttons are turned from the indurated fruit of the Tagua palm? and that the knobs of umbrellas grew originally in the remote depths of Guatemalan forests? Are you aware that a plant called manioc supplies the starchy food of about one-half the population of tropical America? These are the sort of inquiries174 with which a new edition of 'Mangnall's Questions' would have to be filled; and as to answering them—why, even the pupil-teachers in a London Board School (who represent, I suppose, the highest attainable175 level of human knowledge) would often find themselves completely nonplussed176. The fact is, tropical trade has opened out so rapidly and so wonderfully that nobody knows much about the chief articles of tropical growth; we go on using them in an uninquiring spirit of childlike faith, 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 treatise177 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 blessings178 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 beetle104 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 forth57 the notice in question were evidently unaware179 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.
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precedent
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| n.先例，前例；惯例；adj.在前的，在先的 | |
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corona
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| n.日冕 | |
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ingenuous
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| adj.纯朴的，单纯的；天真的；坦率的 | |
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candid
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| adj.公正的，正直的；坦率的 | |
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distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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anticipation
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| n.预期，预料，期望 | |
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strictly
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| adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地 | |
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humbly
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| adv. 恭顺地，谦卑地 | |
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precept
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| n.戒律；格言 | |
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approbation
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| n.称赞；认可 | |
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copious
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| adj.丰富的，大量的 | |
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humble
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| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
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muse
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| n.缪斯（希腊神话中的女神），创作灵感 | |
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muses
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| v.沉思，冥想( muse的第三人称单数 )；沉思自语说（某事） | |
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shun
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| vt.避开，回避，避免 | |
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sedulously
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ornamental
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| adj.装饰的；作装饰用的；n.装饰品；观赏植物 | |
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intentional
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esteem
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admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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envisages
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| 想像，设想( envisage的第三人称单数 ) | |
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sages
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| n.圣人( sage的名词复数 )；智者；哲人；鼠尾草（可用作调料） | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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delightfully
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| 大喜，欣然 | |
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hospitable
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| adj.好客的；宽容的；有利的，适宜的 | |
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degenerate
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| v.退步，堕落；adj.退步的，堕落的；n.堕落者 | |
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highlandman
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| 高原居民，山地居民； [H-](英国)苏格兰高地人 | |
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literally
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| adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实 | |
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immortal
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| adj.不朽的；永生的，不死的；神的 | |
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30
savages
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| 未开化的人，野蛮人( savage的名词复数 ) | |
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31
worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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32
delusive
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| adj.欺骗的，妄想的 | |
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33
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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34
ambrosial
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| adj.美味的 | |
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35
isle
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| n.小岛，岛 | |
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36
sketch
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| n.草图；梗概；素描；v.素描；概述 | |
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37
poetical
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| adj.似诗人的；诗一般的；韵文的；富有诗意的 | |
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38
idyllic
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| adj.质朴宜人的，田园风光的 | |
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39
modesty
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| n.谦逊，虚心，端庄，稳重，羞怯，朴素 | |
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40
graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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41
foliage
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| n.叶子，树叶，簇叶 | |
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42
picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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43
chilly
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| adj.凉快的，寒冷的 | |
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44
theatrical
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| adj.剧场的，演戏的；做戏似的，做作的 | |
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45
casually
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| adv.漠不关心地，无动于衷地，不负责任地 | |
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46
grove
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| n.林子，小树林，园林 | |
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47
bosom
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| n.胸，胸部；胸怀；内心；adj.亲密的 | |
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48
emphasise
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| vt.加强...的语气，强调，着重 | |
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49
frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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50
majestic
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| adj.雄伟的，壮丽的，庄严的，威严的，崇高的 | |
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51
diverging
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| 分开( diverge的现在分词 )； 偏离； 分歧； 分道扬镳 | |
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52
veins
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| n.纹理；矿脉( vein的名词复数 )；静脉；叶脉；纹理 | |
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53
tangled
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| adj. 纠缠的，紊乱的 动词tangle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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54
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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55
overlapping
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| adj./n.交迭（的） | |
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56
sheathing
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| n.覆盖物，罩子v.将（刀、剑等）插入鞘( sheathe的现在分词 )；包，覆盖 | |
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57
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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58
pangs
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| 突然的剧痛( pang的名词复数 )； 悲痛 | |
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59
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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60
Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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61
dwarf
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| n.矮子，侏儒，矮小的动植物；vt.使…矮小 | |
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63
allied
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| adj.协约国的；同盟国的 | |
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64
iris
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| n.虹膜，彩虹 | |
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65
spike
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| n.长钉，钉鞋；v.以大钉钉牢，使...失效 | |
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66
solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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67
irises
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| n.虹( iris的名词复数 )；虹膜；虹彩；鸢尾（花） | |
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68
persistence
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| n.坚持，持续，存留 | |
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69
descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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70
primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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71
petals
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| n.花瓣( petal的名词复数 ) | |
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72
steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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73
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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74
systematically
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| adv.有系统地 | |
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75
alluded
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| 提及，暗指( allude的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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76
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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77
embedded
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| a.扎牢的 | |
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78
pulp
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| n.果肉，纸浆；v.化成纸浆，除去...果肉，制成纸浆 | |
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79
pulpy
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| 果肉状的，多汁的，柔软的； 烂糊； 稀烂 | |
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80
edible
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| n.食品，食物；adj.可食用的 | |
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81
interspersed
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| adj.[医]散开的；点缀的v.intersperse的过去式和过去分词 | |
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82
domesticated
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|
| adj.喜欢家庭生活的；（指动物）被驯养了的v.驯化( domesticate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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83
cultivation
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| n.耕作，培养，栽培（法），养成 | |
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84
deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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85
corrupted
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| （使）败坏( corrupt的过去式和过去分词 )； （使）腐化； 引起（计算机文件等的）错误； 破坏 | |
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86
circumvent
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| vt.环绕，包围；对…用计取胜，智胜 | |
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87
seedlings
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| n.刚出芽的幼苗( seedling的名词复数 ) | |
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88
wriggle
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| v./n.蠕动，扭动；蜿蜒 | |
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89
contentedly
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| adv.心满意足地 | |
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90
pollen
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| n.[植]花粉 | |
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91
hereditary
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| adj.遗传的，遗传性的，可继承的，世袭的 | |
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92
taints
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| n.变质( taint的名词复数 )；污染；玷污；丑陋或腐败的迹象v.使变质( taint的第三人称单数 )；使污染；败坏；被污染，腐坏，败坏 | |
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93
renovated
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| 翻新，修复，整修( renovate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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94
permanently
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| adv.永恒地，永久地，固定不变地 | |
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95
dotage
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| n.年老体衰；年老昏聩 | |
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96
scions
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| n.接穗，幼枝( scion的名词复数 )；（尤指富家）子孙 | |
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97
fission
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| n.裂开；分裂生殖 | |
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98
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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99
rheumatism
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| n.风湿病 | |
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100
joint
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|
| adj.联合的，共同的；n.关节，接合处；v.连接，贴合 | |
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101
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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102
prey
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| n.被掠食者，牺牲者，掠食；v.捕食，掠夺，折磨 | |
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103
fungus
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| n.真菌，真菌类植物 | |
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104
beetle
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| n.甲虫，近视眼的人 | |
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105
beetles
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| n.甲虫( beetle的名词复数 ) | |
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106
persistent
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| adj.坚持不懈的，执意的；持续的 | |
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107
ravages
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| 劫掠后的残迹，破坏的结果，毁坏后的残迹 | |
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108
positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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109
antiquity
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| n.古老；高龄；古物，古迹 | |
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110
unnatural
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| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
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111
heartily
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| adv.衷心地，诚恳地，十分，很 | |
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112
longevity
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| n.长命；长寿 | |
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113
essentially
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| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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114
insignificant
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| adj.无关紧要的，可忽略的，无意义的 | |
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115
northward
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| adv.向北；n.北方的地区 | |
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116
ward
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| n.守卫，监护，病房，行政区，由监护人或法院保护的人（尤指儿童）；vt.守护，躲开 | |
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117
chillier
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| adj.寒冷的，冷得难受的( chilly的比较级 ) | |
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118
epoch
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| n.(新)时代；历元 | |
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119
diffusion
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| n.流布；普及；散漫 | |
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120
anterior
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| adj.较早的；在前的 | |
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121
remarkably
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| ad.不同寻常地，相当地 | |
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122
gorillas
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| n.大猩猩( gorilla的名词复数 )；暴徒，打手 | |
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123
diffuse
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| v.扩散；传播；adj.冗长的；四散的，弥漫的 | |
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124
elevation
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| n.高度；海拔；高地；上升；提高 | |
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125
undue
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| adj.过分的；不适当的；未到期的 | |
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126
peculiarity
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| n.独特性，特色；特殊的东西；怪癖 | |
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127
defensive
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| adj.防御的；防卫的；防守的 | |
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128
helping
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| n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的 | |
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129
pungent
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| adj.（气味、味道）刺激性的，辛辣的；尖锐的 | |
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130
projections
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| 预测( projection的名词复数 )； 投影； 投掷； 突起物 | |
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131
gracefully
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| ad.大大方方地；优美地 | |
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132
ripen
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| vt.使成熟；vi.成熟 | |
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133
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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134
expressive
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| adj.表现的，表达…的，富于表情的 | |
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135
watery
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| adj.有水的，水汪汪的；湿的，湿润的 | |
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136
pulped
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| 水果的肉质部分( pulp的过去式和过去分词 )； 果肉； 纸浆； 低级书刊 | |
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137
treacle
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| n.糖蜜 | |
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138
destitute
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| adj.缺乏的；穷困的 | |
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139
missionary
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| adj.教会的，传教(士)的；n.传教士 | |
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140
desolating
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| 毁坏( desolate的现在分词 )； 极大地破坏； 使沮丧； 使痛苦 | |
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141
melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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142
doomed
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| 命定的 | |
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143
pertinently
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| 适切地 | |
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144
intercourse
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| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
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145
Buddhism
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| n.佛教（教义） | |
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146
wafted
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| v.吹送，飘送，（使）浮动( waft的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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147
feat
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| n.功绩；武艺，技艺；adj.灵巧的，漂亮的，合适的 | |
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148
tarns
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| n.冰斗湖，山中小湖( tarn的名词复数 ) | |
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149
bogs
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| n.沼泽，泥塘( bog的名词复数 )；厕所v.（使）陷入泥沼， （使）陷入困境( bog的第三人称单数 )；妨碍，阻碍 | |
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150
egregious
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|
| adj.非常的，过分的 | |
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151
humbug
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| n.花招，谎话，欺骗 | |
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152
reposed
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| v.将（手臂等）靠在某人（某物）上( repose的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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153
celebrated
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| adj.有名的，声誉卓著的 | |
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154
bestowed
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| 赠给，授予( bestow的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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155
cognate
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| adj.同类的，同源的，同族的；n.同家族的人，同源词 | |
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156
acquit
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| vt.宣判无罪；(oneself)使(自己)表现出 | |
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157
pretensions
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| 自称( pretension的名词复数 )； 自命不凡； 要求； 权力 | |
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158
fabrics
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| 织物( fabric的名词复数 )； 布； 构造； （建筑物的）结构（如墙、地面、屋顶）：质地 | |
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159
hemp
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| n.大麻；纤维 | |
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160
complexity
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| n.复杂(性)，复杂的事物 | |
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161
civilisation
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| n.文明，文化，开化，教化 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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163
cape
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| n.海角，岬；披肩，短披风 | |
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164
Portuguese
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| n.葡萄牙人；葡萄牙语 | |
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165
figs
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| figures 数字，图形，外形 | |
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166
raisins
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| n.葡萄干( raisin的名词复数 ) | |
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167
annually
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| adv.一年一次，每年 | |
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168
quotations
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| n.引用( quotation的名词复数 )；[商业]行情（报告）；（货物或股票的）市价；时价 | |
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169
staple
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| n.主要产物，常用品，主要要素，原料，订书钉，钩环；adj.主要的，重要的；vt.分类 | |
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170
vanilla
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| n.香子兰，香草 | |
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171
orchids
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| n.兰花( orchid的名词复数 ) | |
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172
starches
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| n.淀粉( starch的名词复数 )；含淀粉的食物；浆粉v.把（衣服、床单等）浆一浆( starch的第三人称单数 ) | |
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173
canes
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| n.（某些植物，如竹或甘蔗的）茎( cane的名词复数 )；（用于制作家具等的）竹竿；竹杖 | |
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174
inquiries
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| n.调查( inquiry的名词复数 )；疑问；探究；打听 | |
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175
attainable
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| a.可达到的，可获得的 | |
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nonplussed
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| adj.不知所措的，陷于窘境的v.使迷惑( nonplus的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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177
treatise
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| n.专著；(专题)论文 | |
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178
blessings
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| n.（上帝的）祝福( blessing的名词复数 )；好事；福分；因祸得福 | |
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unaware
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| a.不知道的，未意识到的 | |
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