100 THE WONDERS OF VEGETATION. 



industry and agriculture, is the Ampel, which, how- 

 ever, furnishes levers, carts, ladders, and many similar 

 objects. The Indians, when employed upon lofty 

 palm-trees collecting the palm- wine at a height of a 100 

 feet above the ground, are not afraid of going from 

 one tree to another means of a simple bridge made 

 of ampel-wood. The airy bridge consists of a single 

 long stem of this tree and another lighter one serves 

 as a hand rail. The young shoots, like those of the 

 telin, are used for food. It is in this class of plants that 

 we meet with the iron- wood as it is called in India 

 which gives out sparks under the blows of a hatchet. 

 Its hardness is unequalled, and yet it can be split up 

 into the finest wands and in this form is much more 

 suitable for delicate basket-work than the osier. Even 

 cloth of a certain kind is made from this bamboo. 



We have still to mention the Tcho of the Chinese, 

 which furnishes them- a solid paper, and is used in 

 manufacturing their large parasols. Painters often 

 use it as canvas. There is also the Teba, from which 

 hedges are made and the Arundo scriptoria of Lin- 

 naeus, so called, because the Indian authors obtain their 

 pens from it. 



These latter species prefer a dry, light soil, and 

 are equally acclimatized. The sweet interior of their 

 young branches is a nourishing food, made use of by 

 man and also by herbivorous animals. There is a 

 correspondence between the course of the moon and 

 the vegetation of these plants from which has arisen 

 the superstition that this satellite regulates their growth 

 by its influence, a superstition confined by no means 



