122 THE USES OF THE BAMBOO. 



that he could not undertake so much as to name them all, and wotikl, 

 therefore, confine himself to a consideration of sixty-three of the 

 principal. Some of them are like trees, forty or fifty feet high, with 

 culms eight inches in diameter near the root ; others resemble pipe 

 stems through their length, graceful and slender as a magician's wand ; 

 while one kind presents a black, and another a bright yellow skin. It 

 is cultivated in or near villages, for its shade and beauty, and a grove 

 furnishes culms from year to year, of various sizes. 



No plant presents so rural and oriental an aspect to a villa or hamlet 

 as the clumps of this graceful and stately grass, the many plumes of 

 which, swaying in every breeze, form an object of great beauty, well 

 befitting so useful a plant. The bamboo may well be called useful, for 

 it is applied by the Chinese to such a vast variety of purposes, that 

 they are puzzled to get along without it when they emigrate where it 

 does not grow. 



It is reared from suckers generally, but it is necessary after a time 

 to renew the plants from the seed, as it dies down to the root, like all 

 other grasses, after it flowers. Native authors say that the size of the 

 stalk can be increased by cutting off the shoots and filling the topmost 

 joint of the main one with sulphur for three years, after which the 

 shoots will spring forth with great vigour. 



It is rather difficult to transplant it ; but when once rooted, the 

 suckers annually extend till a clump of a hundred stalks is often pro- 

 duced. The tender but tasteless shoots are cut for food, either boiled, 

 pickled, or comfited, as the customer wishes ; but not the "tender 

 buds and flowers cut like asparagus," as one writer on China describes. 

 The seeds, too, furnish a farina suitable for cakes, and the Chinese 

 have a proverb that the bamboo flowers chiefly in the years of 

 famine. 



The gnarled roots are carved into fantastic images of men, birds, 

 monkeys, or monstrous perversions of animated nature ; cut into lantern 

 handles or canes, known in commerce as whangees ; or turned by lathe 

 into oval sticks for worshippers to divine whether the gods will hear or 

 refuse their petitions. The tapering culms are used for all purposes that 

 poles can be applied to — in carrying, supporting, propelling, and measur- 

 ing — by the porter, the carpenter, and the boatman — in all cases where 

 strength, lightness, and length are requisites. The joists of houses and 

 the ribs of sails, the shafts of spears and the wattles of hurdles, the tubes 

 of aqueducts and the rafters of roofs, the handles of umbrellas, and the 

 ribs of fans, are all constructed of bamboo. 



The leaves are sewn upon cords in layers, to make rain-cloaks ; swept 

 into heaps for manure, matted into thatch, and used as wrappers in 

 cooking rice dumplings. Cut into splints, of various kinds and sizes, 

 the wood is worked into baskets and trays of every form and fancy, 

 twisted into cables, plaited into awnings over boats, houses, and streets 

 and woven into mats for the scenery of the theatre, the roofs of houses, 



