14 THE BAMBOO GARDEN CHAP. 
exceedingly brittle. I have before me such a culm which 
was snapped off by a hen pheasant; it is fully branched, 
but much smaller than the parent stem. At its base 
are two new knots ready apparently to start into life; 
the verticillate roots are on the point of taking their down- 
ward course. Had that end been accomplished, the new 
stem would have been safely fixed in the ground. In its 
frail condition it fell a victim to the rush of a frightened 
bird. 
This more productive character of the upper branches goes 
to show that the method of planting horizontally adopted by 
some Bamboo growers cannot be so advantageous as they 
believe it to be. I have seen it asserted that by laying 
newly-received Bamboos horizontally in the ground roots are 
struck and culms formed all along the stem. I have never 
tried the method myself, though I intend to do so as an 
experiment. But it seems to me that, in the case of the 
Triglossee, Messrs. Riviere have established the fact that, at 
most, roots and new culms could only be produced from the 
few branchless nodes at the base of the stem. 
1. PROPAGATION BY SEED.—Owing to the rarity of the 
occurrence of the fruit—which, indeed, in some species has 
not yet come under the observation of science—this must 
always be the least used method. On one occasion indeed 
we received some seed of a Bamboo under the name of 
Bambusa siamensis, probably from its habitat a tender 
species, which germinated freely, but which we did not 
succeed in rearing beyond the first year, with the same seed 
Kew fared no better. We also raised from seed a number of 
plants of the Burmese Bamboo (Dendrocalamus membrana- 
