MULTIFARIOUS USES OF BAMBOO, ETC. 85 
sara and S. munja, 6-8 feet long, are twisted into ropés, which 
are valued for their elasticity, strength, and resistance to the 
action of water. 
The miscellaneous and mostly native uses to which grasses are 
applied are exceedingly numerous and varied. The bamboos excel 
all other grasses in this respect, being employed for every con- 
ceivable purpose. In the countries where bamboos abound they 
furnish the material most generally used for building houses, the 
stronger stems for posts, rafters, etc., the thin stems (either whole 
or split) for making floors and walls, thatching, matting, etc. 
Three-fourths of the houses in India are made entirely of bamboo, 
and there is hardly a domestic article in India, China, or Japan 
that is not made entirely or partly of this material. Elegant 
furniture, beautifully mottled, and taking a high polish, is made of 
the stems of bamboo, and is now largely imported into Europe. 
The lightness, strength, and flexibility of bamboo-stems, and their 
resistance to the action of water, make them peculiarly adapted 
for many purposes which nothing else could so well serve ; for 
example, bridges, light scaling-ladders (the stems being notched 
at the sides), which can be carried much more easily than ladders 
of heavier wood, masts, yards, and oars of boats, rafts, poles of 
palanquins, etc., lance shafts (Dendrocalamus strictus and one or 
two allied species with solid stems, known as male bamboos, are 
most commonly used for this’ purpose), bows, arrows, quivers, 
clubs, walking sticks, fishing rods. Split bamboo is now largely 
used in Europe for making fishing rods. The Indians of the 
Orinoco and Upper Amazon use the stem of a bamboo (A7fhro- 
stylidium Schomburgkit) as a blow-pipe for their poisoned arrows ; 
the lowest internode, 12 to 16 feet long, with a diameter of 14 
inches, is the part used. Bamboo stems are also used for scaffold- 
ing, for making various agricultural implements, and vehicles of 
every description. Thorny bamboos, when growing, form an 
impenetrable stockade. The stems of some species are so hard 
and flinty that they serve as a whetstone, and thin chips of the 
hard outer portion of the stems are used by the Indians as knives, 
as well for ordinary purposes as for arming the bottom of pits dug 
to ensnare wild animals. Owing to their buoyancy, bamboo rafts 
are very largely used for floating heavier timber down the rivers. 
Portions of the stems are used for an infinite variety of purposes ; 
when cut into short lengths and the nodes removed they make 
water-pipes. An internode, together with a node, makes a re- 
ceptacle for all kinds of small articles, and also serves as a pitcher, 
or a bottle, or a drinking vessel, and as a trade measure for both 
liquids and solids. Pieces of thick bamboo, 3-6 ft. long, with the 
partitions perforated, are used by the hill watermen of India ; 
water can be carried in these long tubes for days without becoming 
warm or in any way deteriorating. In the internodes of the green 
stems fresh flowers can be conveyed for hundreds of miles without 
withering ; the eggs of the silkworm were brought in bamboo 
stems from China to Constantinople in the time of the Emperor 
