SELECT PLANTS KEADILY ELIGIBLE 



actions," 1868), the succeeding enumeration is compiled, and 

 from that masterly essay, resting on very many years' close 

 study of the richest collections, a few prefatory remarks are 

 likewise offered, to vindicate the wish of the writer of seeing 

 these noble and graceful forms of vegetation largely trans- 

 ferred to every part of Australia, where they would impress 

 a grand tropical feature on the landscapes. Even in our far 

 southern latitudes Bamboos from the Indian lowlands have 

 proved to resist our occasional night-frosts of the low country. 

 But in colder places the many sub-alpine species could be 

 reared. Be it remembered that Chusquea aristata advances 

 to an elevation of 15,000 feet on the Andes of Quito, indeed 

 to near the zone of perpetual ice. Arundinaria falcata, A. 

 racemosa and A. spathiflora live on the Indian highlands, at 

 a zone between 10,000 and 11,000 feet, where they are 

 annually beaten down by snow. We may further recognise 

 the great importance of these plants, when we reflect on 

 their manifest industrial uses, or when we consider their 

 grandeur for picturesque scenery, or when we observe their 

 resistance to storms or heat, or when we watch the mar- 

 vellous rapidity in which many develop themselves. Their 

 seeds, though generally only in long intervals produced, are 

 valued in many instances higher than rice. The ordinary 

 great Bamboo of India is known to grow forty feet in forty 

 days, when bathed in the moist heat of the jungles. The 

 Bourbon Bamboo forms an impenetrable sub-alpine belt of 

 extraordinary magnificence in yonder island. One of the 

 Tenasserim Bambusas rises to 150 feet, with a diameter of 

 the mast-like cane sometimes measuring fully one foot. The 

 great West Indian Arthrostylidium is sometimes nearly as 

 high and quite as columnar in its form, while the Dendro- 

 calamus at Pulo Geum is equally colossal. The Platonia 

 Bamboo of the highest wooded moimtains of Parama sends 

 forth leaves fifteen feet in length and one foot in width. 

 Arundinaria macrosperma as far north as Philadelphia rises 

 still in favourable spots to a height of nearly forty feet. 

 Through perforating with artistic care the huge canes of 

 various Bamboos musical sounds can be melodiously produced 

 when the air wafts through the groves, and this singular fact 

 may possibly be turned to practice for checking the devasta- 

 tions from birds on many a cultured spot. Altogether twenty 

 genera with 170 well-marked species are cii^cumscribed by 

 General Mum-o's consummate care; but how may these 

 treasures yet be enriched, when once the snowy mountains of 

 New Guinea through Bamboo jungles become ascended, or 

 when the alps on the sources of the Nile, which Ptolemseus 

 and Julius Caesar already longed to ascend, have become the 



