156 BOTANY OF INDIA. 



Raja Nighant.* Dr. Turner has shown it to consist of 

 " silica, containmg a minute quantity of lime and vegetable 

 matter." In Malabar this kind of bamboo is formed into 

 an arch, by training it, while growing, over an iron frame, 

 to the shape required for supporting the canopies of palan- 

 quins. Finely-arched speciuiens have been known to bring 

 five or six hundred rupees. Bambusa stricta is a smaller 

 species, considerably more straight in the stem, and with a 

 smaller cavity ; on which accounts it is better adapted to 

 some purposes, and the natives always select it for making 

 shafts to their spears. Bambusa spinosa is in request for 

 scaffolding and wicker-work. Bambusa baccifera,\ a tall 

 and very curious species, having for fructification a large 

 pendulous one-seeded berry, is a native of the Chittagong 

 mountains, and used in that country for all building] pur- 

 poses. It is said to be a foot in diameter at the base, from 

 fifty to seventy feet in height, bare of branches except near 

 the extremity, and so beautifully straight as to be without 

 the least flexure or inequality of surface. According to M. 

 Pierard's account, in Roxburgh's Plants of Coromandel, it 

 j'ields more or less tabasheer ; " sometimes, it is said, the 

 cavity between the joints is nearly filled with this substance, 

 which the people call choonah (lime)." There is another 

 species which grows on the Martaban coast, having the 

 stem about twelve inches in diameter, and a hundred feet in 

 height : this appears to be undcscribed. 



All the species of bamboo are at first tender and succu- 

 lent ; they grow with amazing rapidity, but they are often 

 many years before they produce flower and seed. This pri- 

 mary object being once accomplished, they die, and are suc- 

 ceeded by a new generation. 



The sugar-cane {Saccharum officinarum) was knovsm in 

 the East at a very early period ; but it is cultivated to a 

 very small extent with a view to the making of sugar. The 

 cane is still in request, being cut into small pieces, and sold 

 like fruit in the bazars. 



Several plants of this family are cultivated in India, in 

 the same manner as corn is with us ; of these the principal 

 are Oryza sativa (common rice). Sorghum vulgare, PennisC' 



* Dr. Wilson, in Brewster's .Toumal of Science, to!, viii. p. 268. 

 t RosburgU's Plants of Cororaandel, vol. iii. p. 38, t. 243. 



