299 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol, VIII. 
My first recollection of the Katang bamboo is derived from Jubbulpore 
when Sleeman’s Park was still the pride of the station. And the pride of the 
Park lay in the luxuriance of its bamboos. Next, at the Nagpur Exhibition 
at Christmas time, 1865, the finest poles of the Balaghat district were shown. 
I can well remember their extraordinary length, but am too cautious to 
hazard figures. Any one curious on this point had better hunt up an old cata- 
_ logue of the exhibition or apply to Colonel Bloomfield—an excellent authority 
on bamboos—who was the first Deputy Commissioner of the Balaghat district. 
The extreme length of those poles was accounted for in this way: the 
bamboo clumps grew on deep soil, ina moist valley, very close to one another ; 
haying no room for lateral expansion, they could live only by growing very 
tall. 
There were at that time, namely at the end of 1865, one or two enormous 
clumps of Katang in the Maharaj Bagh, the public garden at Nagpur, and on 
its outskirts a great number of young ones, all apparently of the same age, 
not more than about ten years, possibly less. 
The Jubbulpore Exhibition was held at Christmas, 1866. I believe there 
were no Balagh4t bamboos exhibited there, and for this reason, that meanwhile 
there had been a general flowering of the Katang bamboos in the Upper 
Weinganga Valley, that is, m the Bhandara and Balaghdt districts. 
But on this point I have no personal knowledge; I have, at best, a faint 
recollection of what I heard long ago. It may be that the seeding in the 
Weinganga Valley did not occur till 1870. 
The rainfall of 1868 was a disastrous failure in the old Saugor and 
Narbadda territories, and this followed on poor harvests in 1867 and the Spring 
of 1868, severe famine ensued. In May of 1869 I was transferred from 
Nagpur to Jubbulpore. Passing Seoni, two or three miles of projected bamboo 
avenue were met. Small clusters of roots had been divided off from the parent 
clumps, and these roots with four or five feet of stem had been planted, 
fenced, and well watered. 
In Jubbulpore the rains of 1869 commenced very late, but were not parti- 
cularly short in quantity. In the Spring of 1870 about four-fifths of the 
bamboos in Sleeman’s Park and throughout the station burst into flower, 
seeded, and died, The seed would have been all used as food but for the care 
of the District Officers. Seed nurseries were formed, and a vast number of 
young plants were reared, and the surplus distributed far and wide. 
Early in 1881 I was a second time Deputy Commissioner of Narsinghpur, 
living in the house which had once been that of Sir William Sleeman, uncle 
of Colonel Sleeman, the last owner of the Park at Jubbulpore. In my com- 
pound stood two superb clumps of the Bambusa arundinacea. These burst 
into ower, seeded, and died in the hot weather of 1882. From their seed was 
raised a considerable supply of young trees, which were distributed in great 
part along the Great Indian Peninsula Line of Railway. It was, to the best 
