TRANSACTIONS 



OF 



THE LINNEAN SOCIETY. 



I. A Monograph of the Bambusacese, including Descriptions of all the Species. By 



Colonel Mu^o, Companion of the Bath, Knight of the Legion of Honour and the 



Mejidie, F.L.S. fyc 



(Plates I.-VI.) 



I 



Read November 15th, 1866. 



My numerous friends in all parts of the world have for so many years intrusted me 

 with their extensive and valuable collections of Grasses, that I have long been extremely 

 anxious to make the knowledge which I have acquired in examining these specimens, 

 which may be counted by tens of thousands, of some use to botanists generally. Up to 

 the present, I fear, all I can say is that, in addition to some short papers published in 

 diiferent ' Transactions/ I have carefully examined all Grasses sent to me, and to the 

 best of my judgment authenticated and named a very large number in the Hookcrian 

 Herbarium, the British Museum, the Museum of Trinity College, Dublin, A. Gray's and 

 Bentham's own herbariums, and also some of the Canadian and New York herbariums. 



My roving life as a soldier has hitherto, of course, interfered much with any long- 

 continued systematic study, such as would be necessary to complete a monograph of any 

 of the divisions of the Gramineas sufficiently carefully and fully to be worthy of being 



offered to botanists generally. 



Recently I have had more leisure, and access, through the liberality of my friends, to 

 the best botanical libraries in England. I therefore have now much pleasure in making 

 a beginning, by offering to the Linnean Society a memoir on the Bambusacese, a very im- 

 portant division of Graminese, although in the number of species it is exceeded by 

 ' many (indeed nearly all) other divisions. Ruprecht, in 1839, published an excellent 

 memoir on Bambusese, in the fifth volume, second series, of the ' Proceedings ' of the 

 Imperial Academy of St. Petersburg, which really, as far as the species then known are 

 concerned, is quite exhaustive of the subject. I will not, therefore, attempt to enter 

 into the interesting details of the earlier history of Bamboos, of their general structure, 

 or the writings of Rumph, llheede, and others of the older botanists on the subject. 



VOL. XXVI. 



B 





