446 Select Plants for Industrial Culture and 



study of the richest collections, a few preparatory remarks are 

 likewise offered, to vindicate the wish of the writer of seeing these 

 noble and graceful forms of vegetation largely transferred to every 

 part of Australia, and indeed to many other portions of the globe, 

 where they would impress a grand tropical feature on the land- 

 scapes. Even in the far southern latitudes of Victoria, Tasmania 

 and New Zealand, some Bamboos from the Indian lowlands have 

 proved able, to resist our occasional night-frosts of the low country ; 

 but in colder places the many sub-alpine species could be reared. 

 Be it remembered, that Chusquea aristata advances to an elevation 

 of 15,000 feet on the Andes of Quito, indeed to near the zone of 

 perpetual ice. Arundinaria racemosa and A. spathiflora live on the 

 Indian highlands, at a zone between 10,000 and 11,000 feet, where 

 they are annually beaten down by snow. Forms of Bambusaceae 

 still occur, according to Grisebach, in the Kurilian achipelagus up 

 to 46 1ST., and in Japan even to 51. We may further recognise 

 the great importance of these plants, when we reflect on their 

 manifest industrial uses, when we consider their grandeur for 

 picturesque scenery, when we observe their resistance to storms or 

 heat, or when we watch the marvellous rapidity with which many 

 develop. Their seeds, though generally produced only at long 

 intervals, are valued in many instances higher than rice. The 

 ordinary great Bamboo of India is known to grow 40 feet in forty 

 days, when bathed in the moist heat of the jungles. Delchevalerie 

 noticed the growth of some Indian Bamboos at Cairo to have been 

 10 inches in one night. Their power of growth is such, as to 

 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 extraor- 

 dinary magnificence in that island. Dendrocalamus Brandisii, the 

 Tenasserim-Bamboo, rises to about 150 feet, 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 macrosperma, 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 consummate 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 Ptolemaeus and Julius Caesar 



