CHAPTER. IV 
USES—CUSTOMS—SUPERSTITIONS 
THERE is not in the whole vegetable kingdom a plant which 
is so intimately bound up with the life of mankind as the 
Bamboo. In India, Ceylon, China, Japan, the Malay Archi- 
pelago, and in the tropical forests the world over it is a 
servant-of-all-work. 
More than one case is recorded where the abundant seeds 
of the Bamboo have been the means of staving off the 
horrors of an Indian famine. In Orissa, in 1812, when one 
of those rare general flowerings of the Bamboo, to which 
allusion has been made, took place, there was famine in the 
land. The seeds of the Bamboo, cooked and eaten like rice, 
gave their only food to many thousands. Day and night the 
people watched to gather the precious fruit as it fell. Mr. 
Shaw Stewart, the collector of Canara, on the western coast 
of India, states that “In 1864 there was a general flower- 
ing of the Bamboo in the Soopa jungles, and a very large 
number of persons, estimated at 50,000, came from the Dhar- 
war and Belgaum districts to collect the seed. Each party 
remained about ten or fourteen days, taking away enough for 
their own consumption during the monsoon months, as well 
as some for sale,” and adds, that “the flowering was a most 
