PERIOD OF FELLING BAMBOOS. 81 



The bamboo culms, whether mature or growing, all rise from 

 a complicated network of underground rhizomes, in which the 

 food for the young bamboo is stored. Since a young culm is 

 on the same rhizome as several mature ones, they all have a 

 common source of water supply in the roots below, and the 

 water obtained by the young bamboo, which has no leaf 

 system of its own to suck up the water, depends largely on the 

 amount left over when the adult culms have been satisfied. 



The growing culms in fact are left with so small a supply of 

 water in the daytime that not only is there no oozing out 

 of water from them, but the supply necessary for their 

 growth is removed, and their growth is slower or altogether 

 stopped. 



Should rain occur during the day, with its accompanying 

 high humidity, the loss from the leaves is checked, a supply 

 of water is available for the young culms, and their growth 

 immediately increases in rapidity. It is not as a rule until 

 darkness sets in that the loss of water from the leaf system is 

 completely checked, and on dark nights of high humidity we 

 get conditions in which the supply from the roots, not being 

 required by the leaves, oozes out from the young culms, and 

 so fills the mature ones that if injured in any spot water flows 

 fairly copiously from them. 



It seems to follow, therefore , that if anv difference in beetle- 

 resisting qualities occurs in the bamboos at different times 

 of the day or month , it must be due to the greater or smaller 

 quantity of water in the culms when cut down, and this, as we 

 have shown, is a direct consequence of the atmospheric 

 conditions, whether of light or humidity. 



If therefore there is really any foundation of fact in the 

 l)elief of the effect of the moon's phases it wall be probably 

 found to lie in the different weather conditions prevailing at 

 one period of the moon from those prevailing at another. If 

 it could be shown that at full moon in India the atmosphere 

 was either uniformly drier or moister than at new moon, then 

 we should have some clue to a scientific explanation of the 

 native belief. This point of view brings the native belief into 

 line with the very widespread idea that the moon has an 

 influence on the weather, an idea until recently very prevalent 



7(8)07 (10) 



