348 Select Plants for Industrial Culture 



upset stone-walls or demolish substantial buildings. As shelter-plants 

 for grazing animals these giant-reeds are most eligible. The 

 Bourbon-Bamboo forms an impenetrable sub-alpine belt of extra- 

 ordinary magnificence in that island. One of the Tenasserim-Bam- 

 busas rises to about 150 feet, with the mast-like cane sometimes 

 measuring fully one foot in diameter. The great West-Indian 

 Arthrostylidium is sometimes nearly as high and quite as columnar in 

 its form, while the Dendrocalamus at Pulo-Geum is equally colossal. 

 The Platonia-Bamboo of the highest wooded mountains of Panama 

 sends forth leaves occasionally 15 feet in length and 1 foot in width. 

 Arundinaria inacrosperma, as far north as Philadelphia, still rises to a 

 height of nearly 40 feet in favorable spots, and one of the Japan- 

 Bamboos, according to Mr. Christy, gains the height of 60 feet even in 

 those extra-tropical latitudes. Through perforating with artistic 

 care the huge canes of various Bamboos, musical sounds can be 

 melodiously produced, when the air wafts through the groves, 

 and this singular fact may possibly be turned to practice for 

 checking the devastations from birds on many a cultured spot. 

 Altogether twenty genera, with one hundred and seventy well- 

 marked species, are circumscribed by General Munro's con- 

 summate care ; but how may these treasures yet be enriched, 

 when once the alpine mountains of New Guinea through Bamboo 

 jungles have been scaled, or when the highlands on the sources of the 

 Nile, which Ptolemseus and Julius Caesar already longed to ascend,, 

 have become the territory also of phytologic researches, not to speak 

 of many other tropical regions as yet left unexplored ! Europe pos- 

 sesses no Bamboo; Australia, as far as hitherto ascertained, only three. 

 Almost all Bamboos are local, and there seems really no exception to 

 the fact, that none are indigenous to both hemispheres, a remark which 

 applies to Palms as well, with the sole exception of Cocos nucife'ra, the 

 nuts of which indeed may have drifted from the western to the eastern 

 world. All true Bambusas are Oriental. Observations on the growth 

 of many Bamboos in Italy are recently offered by Chevalier FenzL 

 The introduction of these exquisite plants is one of the easiest 

 imaginable, either from seeds or the living roots. The consuls at 

 distant ports, the missionaries, the mercantile and navigating gentle- 

 men abroad, and particularly also many travellers could all easily aid 

 in transferring the various Bamboos from one country to another 

 from hemisphere to hemisphere. Most plants of this kind, once well 

 established in strength under glass, can be trusted out in mild tem- 

 perate climes to permanent locations with perfect and lasting safety at 

 the commencement of the warm season. Indeed, Bamboos are hardier 

 than most intra-tropical plants, and the majority of them are not the 

 denizens of the hottest lowlands, but delight in the cooler air of 

 mountain-regions. Strong manuring brings some tardy flowering 

 Bamboos early into bloom. In selecting the following array from 

 General Munro's monograph, it must be noted, that it comprises only 

 ' a limited number, and that among those, which are already to some 

 extent known, several as yet cannot be defined with precision in their- 



