GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. ll 



American farmer without the white pine, for they are not only depend- 

 ent upon it for their building- material, but make their ropes, mats, 

 kitchen utensils, and innumerable other articles out of it, and at the 

 same time consider it among the most nutritious of their vegetables. 

 To enumerate the uses of such a family of plants as this would be like 

 giving a list of the articles made from American pine, and it would 

 not serve the purpose of this bulletin so well as to simply point out 

 the fact that the wood of this bamboo is suited to the manufacture of 

 a different class of articles and fills a different want from that of any 

 of our American woods. Every country schoolboy is aware of the 

 superiority of a bamboo fishing pole over any other. Its flexibility, 

 lightness, and strength distinguish it sharply from anj^ American poles, 

 and make it better suited for a fishing rod than one made from an}^ 

 wood grown in this country. It is because the American schoolboys 

 are so firmly convinced that the bamboo fishing- poles are the best that 

 the importers are warranted in shipping into the United States from 

 Japan every year several millions of them/' 



The thin, flexible ribs of the imported Japanese fan are made from 

 the wood of the same plant, and no one can fail to recognize the pecul- 

 iar fitness of the material for this particular use. 



These are two uses of bamboo wood which illustrate its character, 

 and must be familiar to nearly eve^one. When one realizes, how- 

 ever, that they are selected from over a hundred, which would be just 

 as familiar to the Chinese or Japanese, it seems highly probable that 

 this wood must be applicable to many other needs among Americans, 

 which a closer acquaintance with it would reveal. Santos Dumont 

 has empk^ed bamboo extensive^ in the framework of his dirigible 

 balloons, and Edison once used it in his incandescent lamps. 



Americans see in America only the imported poles or manufactured 

 articles as a rule, and from these it is very difficult to imagine the 

 multitude of uses to which the green, uncured stems are put. It is 

 for just such things as can be made quickly from the green shoots that 

 the plant is peculiarly fitted, and this suitability for making all sorts 

 of hand}- contrivances is one of the principal reasons wiry it should be 

 made a common plant among the farmers of those parts of our coun- 

 try where it will grow. 



The bamboos belong to the family of the grasses, and if this fact is 

 kept in mind many peculiarities of their habits and characters will be 

 easily understood. They should be distinguished, however, from the 

 reeds, of which we have a number in America, especially such as are 

 called "bamboo reed" or u Arundo" (Arundo donax), a rank-growing 

 grass, with stems bearing long broad leaves to their very bases. 



"The writer was informed by a large grower near Kyoto that 10,000,000 are 

 exported from Japan every year, and that the largest share of them goes to America. 



