114 TROPICAL PLANTS 



and then the fig tree and its usurping progeny of vines, re- 

 ceiving no more succour from their late foster-parent, dro(»i) 

 and perish in their turn." 



Our stateliest oaks would look like p3^gmies near this " chief- 

 tain of the forests," who raises his dark green cupola over all 

 the neighbouring trees, and deceives the traveller, who fancies 

 that a verdant hill is rising before him. Its wood is much 

 firmer than that of the fir, and is, or will be, of great im- 

 portance to the British navy. On the Upper Barima alone, a 

 river of Guiana hardly even known by name in Europe, Schom- 

 burgk found the giant tree growing in such profusion that it 

 could easily afford sufficient timber for the proudest fleet that 

 ever rode the ocean. 



The graceful tapering form of the Grraminece, or grasses, 

 belongs to every zone ; but it is only in the warmer regions of 

 the globe that we find the colossal Bambusacece, rivalling in 

 grandeur the loftiest trees of the primeval forest. Such is the 

 rapidity of their growth, that in the Eoyal Botanical Garden 

 in Edinburgh, a bamboo was observed to increase six inches a 

 day in a temperature of from 65° to 70°. The Baonbusa gi- 

 gantea of Burmah has been known to grow eighteen inches in 

 twenty-four hours ; and as the Bambusa Tulda in Bengal attains 

 its full height of seventy feet in a single month, its average 

 increase cannot be less than an inch per hour ! 



In New Grenada and Quito the Guadua, one of these giant 

 grasses, ranks next to the sugar-cane and maize as the plant 

 most indispensable to man. It forms dense jungles, not only 

 in the lower regions of the country, but in the valleys of the 

 Andes, 5000 feet above the level of the sea. The culms attain 

 a thickness of six inches, the single joints are twenty inches 

 long, and the leaves are of indescribable beauty. A whole hut 

 can be built and thatched with the guadua, while the single 

 joints are extensively used as water-vessels and drinking- 

 cups. 



India, South China, and the Eastern Archipelago are the 

 seats of the real bamboos, which grow in a variety of genera 

 and species, as well on the banks of lakes and rivers in low 

 marshy grounds, as in the more elevated mountainous regions. 

 Thoy chiefly form the impenetrable jungles, the seat of the 

 tiger and the python. Sometimes a hundred culms spring from 



