August 19, 1891.] 



Garden and Forest. 



387 



boo-forest, interspersed with such deciduous hard-wooded 

 trees as Teak, Kino, Rose and Sandal-woods, and others of an 

 equally valuable description, was, although unknown to me 

 at the time, upon the eve of a sudden and wonderful transfor- 

 mation. Hundreds of square miles thickly covered with the 

 exquisitely graceful clumps of the Bamboo, giving to the 

 landscape as far as the eye could reach a beauty difficult to 

 describe, were to be changed by fire in the brief period of a 

 little over a year into a charred and blackened wilderness. 

 The myriads of nodding plumes that for half a century had 

 graced the woodlands were, at the call of Nature, to blossom, 

 yield their seed, and disappear from the face of the earth as 

 by the breath of a destroying angel. 



The south-west monsoon rains of 1863 had ceased about the 

 middle of September, and left the jungle tracts of Malabar in 

 the very heyday of their glorious greenery. The Bamboo- 

 plumes waved to and fro by the gentle breezes which still pre- 

 vailed from the westward and glistened in the light of a 

 tropical sun, as yet showing no trace of the change they were 

 so soon to undergo. As the season advanced, hot parching 

 winds from the east began to take the place of the more kindly 

 breezes from the west, and by Christmas the leaves of the 

 Bamboo thickly covered the ground. Simultaneously with 

 the disappearance of the leaves from the laterals, the inflor- 

 escence began to appear, and the aspect of the country in 

 every direction changed as if by magic. No one was prepared 

 for such an eventuality, and the English planters in the district 

 were struck with something akin to alarm when the fact 

 dawned upon them that, in the course of a very brief period, 

 not a living Bamboo would be left in the forest. A few there 

 were who refused to believe that the culms would perish after 

 ripening their seeds, and were only persuaded by the actual 

 realization of the fact. As nearly as I can remember, the seed 

 was matured by the middle of May, the panicles of grain 

 weighing down the culms to a third of their length, and giving 

 them withal a graceful as well as fruitful appearace. When 

 the seed, which was about the size and had much the appear- 

 ance of small oats, had fully matured, it fell to the ground in 

 showers by every passing breeze, and then came a happy sea- 

 son for both man and bird. Sea-fowl, spur-fowl, partridge, 

 jungle-fowl and quail, with which the jungles abounded, rev- 

 eled in and fattened upon the plentiful supply of good food so 

 suddenly bestowed upon them by the hand of Nature, and 

 man himself was not slow to take advantage of the offering. 

 The coolies from Mysore employed on the Coffee-plantations 

 could with difficulty be induced to remain steadily at work 

 during this Bamboo harvest, and the jungle tribes could not 

 be persuaded to work at all, but subsisted solely on the fallen 

 grain of the Bamboo so long as any could be gathered from 

 the ground. This seed they appeared to highly value, and it 

 seemed to be very nutritious. The grain was ground into 

 meal by the aid of small hand-mills, and baked in the form of 

 cakes, or boiled into a thick porridge. I myself ate the cakes 

 on several occasions, and found them fairly palatable. These 

 jungle tribes, although perfectly aware of the value of the vast 

 granary thus laid at their feet, were, notwithstanding, improvi- 

 dent to a degree. They ate abundantly of the fruit while it lay 

 on the ground, but made no provision against the approaching 

 destruction of the whole by jungle-fires. So, after these had 

 licked the ground, they had, perforce, to return to work on the 

 Coffee-plantations. At the height of the dry season, and when 

 the earth was thickly covered with a coating of Bamboo-leaves 

 and seed, these fires began to do their work, and apparently 

 so completely, that it was hard to believe that a single Bam- 

 boo-seed could have escaped destruction, and that in the 

 course of a decade or so, another such magnificent Bamboo- 

 forest could be produced. But Nature in some mysterious 

 way was equal to the occasion, and before I left India, in 1877, 

 the Bamboo zone of Malabar and Mysore was clothed with 

 another jungle, consisting of clumps approaching in size and 

 grandeur those that perished in 1863. 



From the date of the seeding of the Bamboo the clumps 

 stood throughout the following monsoon leafless and dead, but 

 intact ; it was not till nearly a year after that their complete 

 destruction by fire began. When the dead and sapless clumps 

 caught light the whole country was filled with flame and 

 smoke for weeks together; loud reports were heard night and 

 day without intermission, resulting from the pent-up gases 

 within the hollow culms, and the whole Bamboo zone, so 

 picturesque and beautiful but a twelvemonth before, was 

 quickly reduced to a scene of desolation. The total destruc- 

 tion of the clumps, however, was not accomplished in one 

 season, many escaping the fires till the second, and some till 

 the third. 



The young seedlings soon began to appear, but made slow 



progress for several years. As time went on the annual 

 growth of culms waxed stouter and stouter, till at last a thick 

 undergrowth of low Bamboo tufts covered the ground, which, 

 in the fullness of time, began to send up gigantic canes, till the 

 forest was restored to its former strength and beauty. 



With reference to the period of time required for the matur- 

 ation of Bambusa arundinacea, I was at some little trouble, 

 while in India, to ascertain from the native tribes inhabiting 

 the jungles of the district the approximate duration of its ex- 

 istence, and was told by several men, apparently about sixty 

 years of age, living widely apart, that they remembered a 

 similar phenomenon of the seeding of the whole of the Bam- 

 boos of the district when they were boys. From this I con- 

 cluded that about fifty years was the limit to the life of this 

 giant species of Bambusa. 



About three months before the flowering of the Bamboo I 

 had occasion to clear some thirty or forty acres of land for the 

 purpose of Coffee-planting, the culms of the Bamboo being 

 cut close to the ground. I waited patiently, curious to know 

 the result of such an operation. When the monsoon rains 

 began the huge stools left in the ground began at once to send 

 up numerous small culms of from eight to ten feet in height, 

 and furnished with laterals. On the cessation of the rains 

 these immediately flowered and seeded, after which the old 

 stools perished absolutely, so that the act of cutting down the 

 original culms had only the effect of delaying, not frustrating, 

 Nature in her efforts at reproduction. — J. Lowrie, in the 

 Gardeners' Chronicle. 



How We Renewed an Old Place. 



XVI.— THE BLESSING OF THE RAIN. 



A KINDLY critic has remonstrated with me for setting flow- 

 •**- ering plants around the trees, as contrary to good rules. 

 I freely admit the fact, but in extenuation of the fault would 

 urge that for the first year or two the bare polls of the trees, 

 cut in till they were not much better than scrubbing-brushes, 

 were so ugly that I wanted to distract people's attention from 

 them. Moreover, the Geraniums and Heliotropes and Nas- 

 turtiums were handy for watering and plucking, facts worthy 

 of consideration in a region of dry, hot summers, so that I 

 was tempted, like my mother Eve before me, into willful sin. 



Unlike the fault of our first parents, however, my fall from 

 grace is not permanent. The trees have taken it upon them- 

 selves to correct the error in taste by taking all the nutriment 

 away from the flowers and by spreading out their branches 

 until the beds are too shaded to furnish blossoms. This sum- 

 mer the cold June has added to their other discomforts, and 

 the day of flower-beds in the neighborhood of the trees is 

 ended. Should these last do their duty this year as they promise, 

 they will be far enough along for us to permit the grass to 

 grow close up to their trunks, which will greatly improve the 

 beauty of the lawn, and the natural look of the trees them- 

 selves, which began to make their best growth about the first 

 of July, after they had reaped the full benefit of the heavy 

 rains of later June and were rid of the rose-bugs. 



Refreshing, indeed, was the long storm that succeeded the 

 burning days, and it was a joy to see the thirsty grass and 

 plants drinking in life with every drop. I am convinced that 

 the true way to render yourself indifferent to inclement 

 weather in the country is to plant trees. No rain can ever 

 hurt them, and, when they are freshly set out, each shower is 

 a satisfaction to their owner, for it seems as if they could be 

 seen to grow under its kindly influence, and thus a day or 

 week of hard rain, instead of a weariness, becomes a positive 

 delight. I am not sure that this would bring compensation to 

 the young for having to forego their active pleasures, but the 

 more I become interested in gardening the more I am con- 

 vinced that it is the appropriate pleasure for middle life and 

 old age. 



Youth hates to wait for anything, and wishes to realize its 

 dreams so soon as they are conceived ; but as we advance in 

 years we take a sober satisfaction in waiting a little for our 

 pleasures, and also we like something that can recur, and that 

 is interminable. Most other delights once experienced are 

 exhausted, but gardening grows by what it feeds on. It is the 

 same, and yet never the same ; it can be forever renewed ; it 

 can be indefinitely extended ; it is within the reach of all 

 dwellers in the country, where home amusements are most 

 needed. It can be compassed by the slenderest purse, and it 

 will give a man a chance to spend a fortune if he so desire. 

 It has its agreeable economies, and its fascinating extrava- 

 gances. It can be made to satisfy the most orderly disposi- 

 tions, and also return beauty and grace from careless and wild 



