INTRODUCTION. KV 
Soon after I commenced my career in India as a forest officer, my attention 
was very forcibly drawn to the difficulties which existed in recognizing in the forests, 
and especially in the great evergreen forests, the trees which were met with, and 
among them the various species of bamboo. The leaves of bamboos, and especially 
those of the bigger species, have such a very similar appearance, that either in 
the field or from dried leaf specimens, it is most difficult to say to which species 
any given example belongs. On individual clumps, too, the leaves may vary so 
greatly in size and shape, according to the part they are taken from, that one 
cannot always be sure of identification. In this way, I was led to examine closely, 
in the part of the country in which I was at work from 1872 onwards, such clumps 
as I met with, in order to see if I could not discover some better characters for 
certain identification which could be used by the forest staff. In 1872 I had made 
the acquaintance of the late Mr. Sulpiz Kurz, Curator of the Herbarium of the 
Royal Botanic Garden, Calcutta, and found that he, too, was greatly interested in 
the same subject and was actually engaged in preparing an account of the Indian 
and Malay species, paying special attention to those characters which were likely 
to help the forest officers of Burma, in whose behalf he was engaged on his well- 
known and excellent “Forest Flora,” to enable them to distinguish between the many 
important kinds they came across daily. Mr. Kurz’s work on the bamboos began with 
the publication in January 1876, in vol. I of the then newly-established magazine, 
the “Indian Forester,” of a paper on “Bamboo and its use,” which admirable article 
is still probably the best general treatise on the subject: and was followed, in April 
of the same year, by an account of the species known to him to be found in 
the Indian Archipelago and Malaya, and which he had carefully studied in the 
о Botanic Garden at Buitenzorg in Java. Mr. Kurz’s intention had been to give 
next an account of the Indian species, but his sad death at Penang in December 
1877 prevented this, though the materials he had collected, consisting of Herbarium 
specimens, drawings, notes and dissections, were left available, and have been fully 
utilized in the present work. So far as the Burmese species were concerned, his 
“Forest Flora of British Burma” had supplied all that was known at that time, but 
ci ia proper still remained. 
the m ч скара England on furlough, and while there I took the opportunity 
of carrying my own collections to Kew in order to compare them with the valuable 
set in the Royal Herbarium, with the intention of putting together in a short 
paper some notes on the best means of recognizing нуна ока га Fi 
especially Dr. George King of the Calcutta Garden, ad recommen me to do 
more, and their advice was so strongly repeated by Sir Joseph Hooker, K.C.S.L., 
the late, and Mr. W. H. Thiselton- е, CMG, C.LE., the present, Director of 
the Royal Gardens at Kew, that I was induced to try my best to carry out their 
wishes. The result is the present work, which Dr. George King has so kindly 
assisted me to publish in the Annals of his great establishment. The list of 
those who have assisted me in the work is a long one, and I cannot too grate- 
fully acknowledge the kind way in which my friends have helped me. Besides 
