30 THE BAMBOO GARDEN CHAP. 
could have woven the dainty web—are a common and 
obvious use of the fibre. The same material made into great 
hats like inverted baskets protects the coolie from the sun, 
while the labourers in the rice fields go about looking like 
animated haycocks in waterproof coats made of the dried 
leaves of Bamboo sewn together. See at the corner of the 
street a fortune-teller attracting a crowd around him as he 
tells the future by the aid of slips of Bamboo graven with 
mysterious characters and shaken up in a Bamboo. cup, and 
every man around him smoking a Bamboo pipe. See in 
yonder cook-shop the son of Han regaling himself with a 
mess of Bamboo shoots, which have been cooked in a vessel 
of the same material coated with clay, and are eaten with 
chopsticks which may have grown on the same parent stem. 
Such shoots, either in the shape of pickles or preserved in 
sugar, are an article of export from south to north where 
they are esteemed a delicacy. 
Then there is the famous medicine Tabashir, the great 
and infallible nostrum with which some Buddhist priest or 
Chinese Dulcamara will promise to heal you of every and 
any ailment. In certain Bamboos, especially, according to 
Roxburgh, in the Melocanna bambusoides, there is found in 
the cavities between the knots a substance consisting of 
silica with a little lime and vegetable matter, or sometimes 
of silica and potash in the proportion of about seventy parts 
of silica to thirty of potash. It is said to be formed by 
extravasation of the juices of the plant in consequence of 
some diseased condition of the nodes or joints. Beautifully 
opalescent, the loveliness of Tabashir is by the faithful 
regarded as only equalled by its medicinal virtues. Some 
