52 TROPICAL NATURE, AND OTHER ESSAYS. 



like cords to a length of eight feet, and are covered with 

 numbers of large star-like crimson-spotted flowers. 



Bamboos. The gigantic grasses called bamboos can 

 hardly be classed as typical plants of the tropical zone, 

 because they appear to be absent from the entire African 

 continent and are comparatively scarce in South 

 America. They also extend beyond the geographical 

 tropics in China and Japan as well as in Northern India. 

 It is however within the tropics and towards the equator 

 that they attain their full size and beauty, and it is 

 here that the species are most numerous and offer that 

 variety of form, size, and quality, which renders them 

 so admirable a boon to man. A fine clump of large 

 bamboos is perhaps the most graceful of all vegetable 

 forms, resembling the light and airy plumes of the bird- 

 of-paradise copied on a gigantic scale in living foliage. 

 Such clumps are often eighty or a hundred feet high, the 

 glossy stems, perhaps six inches thick at the base, spring- 

 ing up at first straight as an arrow, tapering gradually to 

 a slender point, and bending over in elegant curves with 

 the weight of the slender branches and grassy leaves. 

 The various species differ greatly in size and proportions ; 

 in the comparative length of the joints ; in the thickness 

 and strength of the stem- walls ; in their straightness, 

 smoothness, hardness, and durability. Some are spiny, 

 others are unarmed ; some have simple stems, others are 

 thickly set with branches ; while some species even grow 

 in such an irregular, zig-zag, branched manner as to form 

 veritable climbing bamboos. They generally prefer dry 

 and upland stations, though some grow near the banks 

 of rivers, and a few in the thick forests and, in South 

 America, in flooded tracts. They often form dense 



