548 GRAMINES. 
summed up here. Sugar is a general produce of grasses, 
serve for drinking, eating or storing small goods, as also the water- 
tubes in which water is fetched from the river or stored in the 
house, are usually made of bamboo. In many countries they serve 
also for axles, poles, and other parts of a native cart. For basket 
and faney-work bamboo is admirably fitted, and the most exquisite 
triumphal arches, with flowers, bands, etc. (all of bamboo), are 
erected at festivals by the natives. The young stems, as also 4 
few of the softer wooded kinds of bamboo, yield ample material 
for paper-making and even for coarse clothing and gunny-sacks. 
Musical instruments, too, from the harp and flute to the drum, 
are made of the same useful grass. The young shoots of many 
species are eaten cooked in curries, etc., or pickled, and form the 
well-known Malay bamboo-atchar. Silica is contained in the wi 
in great quantity, and in one species ‘so much that the wood gives 
off sparks when cut or stroke with iron dahs. 
(Bamboos with usually petioled leaves, the petiole articulate-inserted 5 
stems in all species woody. 
* Stamens 3.—More or less shrubby bamboos. 
Inner icarinate ; caryopsis with a membranous closely : 
: : ‘ S : . Arundinaria, 
* %* Stamens 6 or more, free or connate. 
X Caryopsis small, wheat-like, with a membranous peri- 
carp closely adnate to the seed, the style caducous. 
