BULRUSHES, 



169 



staves of casks intended to hold liquids ; the pithy structure 

 of these rushes causing them to swell when moist^ they 

 close any interstices between the staves \vhich otherwise are 

 not quite water-tight. They consist of a single culm^ or 

 stalky rising to the height of six or eight feet^ about half an 

 inch in diameter at the base and pointed at the top ; the 

 tuft of brown inconspicuous flowers coming out at the side 

 of the stalk near the top. It grows in marshy situations 

 on the borders of rivers and fresh-water lakes in many parts 

 of Northern Europe^ but particularly in the Netherlands. 

 Many vessels laden with bulrushes, as they are called, arrive 

 in England annually from Holland and Belgium. Owing 

 to their lightness^ these vessels do not bring more than 

 thirty or forty tons of rushes each voyage ; nevertheless more 

 than a thousand tons are annually imported; the returns for 

 1850 gave the number of bundles as 40,000, but this was 

 greatly below the real number, which could not be correctly 

 ascertained. 



Of those vegetable fibres which are of commercial import- 

 ance, and belonging strictly to this division of the subject, 

 there are one or two which differ from all the preceding 

 in their botanical characters, and one of these is more ex- 

 tensively used than any of those already described. The 



