BANANA LANDS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22350, 22 February 1936, Page 35 (Supplement)

BANANA LANDS

ROUND THE CARIBBEAN An amusing and informative book by Mr. C. W. Wardlaw is just to hand. "Green Havoc," describes in detail the cultivation, diseases and the whole story of the banana from the earliest times, when it was brought from India, by way of the Canary Islands, to the West Indies and the mainland about the Caribbean to form a staple industry and the main article of export. The author is a young British scientist who went to Trinidad and other West Indian islands to study the disease so rife in banana plantations that it is responsible for the destruction of acres of fruit and the loss of much money. He combines business with pleasure and a well developed sense of humour enables him to treat the subject in a popular manner, so that the ordinary reader, unconcerned with agricultural problems, may derive pleasure, amusement and much information from the book. "Slowly the good ship sails to her destination. Green and mountainous, with the swampy coastal lands still enshrouded in ground mist, Trinidad stands forth pleasing and refreshing to the eye. We move closer to the shore, though still far out. The propeller bogins to churn up Orinoco silt on the shallow bottom, and soon with a clanging of bells and much Bhouting, the anchor splashes down into the Gulf of Paria. We have arrived." Such is the author's stylo, and his travels about the Caribbean to the principal banana plantations include visits to Jamaica, the Windward Islands, Central America, Panama and parts of South America. • . _ _ The second half of the book, devoted to descriptive narative of these little known lands is especially noteworthy, and a most unusual book awaits the reader in its significant green and orange wrapper.

"Green Havoc," by C. W. Wardlaw. (Blackwood)