2 COLON^feL MUNRO'S MoNOtiUAlMl OF THE BAMBUSACE.E. 



Every one who has travelled in the couutries where the ]5anihoos prevail can give 

 instruetive accounts of the multitudinous uses to which they are applied. During- the 

 List summer very many g^ardeners, in England eveu, have been iu the habit of using 

 almost daily a Bamboo which is sold abundantly in Covent Garden and elsewhere, for 

 sticks for supporting plants, instead of the old-fashioned green ones. This is, I believe, 

 a species of Pliylhatdcliys. Rumph says that the ^Malays, in his time even, believed 

 that the hollow stem of a Bamboo was the original womb of Man. The seeds and young 

 shoots of Bamboos are eaten by men, the leaves as fodder by horses ; and these leaves 

 again, in some countries form the principal portion of the roofs of the houses, and the 

 stuffing of comfortable beds, as the split stems do the mats for the floors in a large 

 number of houses, in ]\Iadras especially. Good cordage and jjaper is made from the 

 fibre, good houses and furniture, and even fishing-contrivances from the stems. A valu- 

 able medicine, Tabasheer, which, I believe, still bears a high price, is found in the 

 joints of several species, especially, according to lloxburgh, in that of the Ilelocanna 

 bambusoldes, the cavity between the joints of which is nearly filled with it. The natives 

 call it Chiina Lime. Sir Emerson Teunent, in the first volume of his work on Ceylon, 

 mentions one very curious use to which Bamboos are applied in Malacca, lie says, " In 

 the Malayan peninsula the living Bamboo has been converted into an instrument of 

 natural music, by perforating it with holes, through which the wind is permitted to sigh 

 in the most charming manner." ..." Mr. Logan, in 1847, in approaching the villages of 

 Kandingu, contiguous to the frontier of the European settlement of Malacca, heard 

 sounds, some soft and liquid like the notes of a flute, and others deep and full, like 

 the tones of an organ. On drawing near to a clump of trees, a slender Bamboo, 40 feet 

 in height, was observed ; and it was ascertained that the musical tones issued from it, 

 and were caused by the breeze passing through perforations in the stem. The instru- 

 ment thus formed is called by the natives Bidn perinXhi, or plaintive Bamboo. Those 

 which Mr. Logan saw had a slit in each joint, so that each stem possessed fourteen or 

 twenty notes." I will not, however, enter into further details on this interesting and 

 utilitarian part of the suliject, quite agreeing, as I do, ^^'ith Dr. Hooker, who says, in his 

 ' Himalayan Journals,' that it Avould take many pages to describe the numerous piu-poses 

 to which the various species of Bamboo are put. The Chinese, it is said, use the 

 Bamboo for nearly everything they require, even to ])ac'kiug the tea which they send all 

 over the world. 



Ptuprecht, who had, apparently, free access to the WUldenow Herbarium, the speci- 

 mens in the British Museum collected in Kepal by Wallich, in 1821, and the Peninsula 

 Bamboos, collected by Wight, describes nine genera and sixty-seven species in all, of 

 w^hich he had seen fifty-five in flower. Of these I have been obliged to reduce about 

 five, thus leaving iifty. In the following pages I have described upwards of 170 species 

 of twenty genera, showing how largely our knowle!lg<> of this iamily has increased in 

 the last twenty-five years. Yet there are many more, doubtless, still to describe, judging 

 from the leaves that I have seen of several species, which I have been unable to make 

 much use of without the flowers. 



The difficulty of procuring the flowers of Bamboos is often very great, lloxburgh, an 



