268 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



let the doubling be once thoroughly set up in the plant's constitu- 

 tion, and it then seems that a rich soil will probably enhance it. 



As soon as the slightest indication of petalody of the stamens 

 has appeared, by one or more of them having a minute petal-like 

 appendage : then that particular flower in which the change has 

 occurred must be fertilised with its own pollen, all other pollen 

 being rigidly excluded. The progeny will, in all probability, 

 prove to be semi- or quite double. Such was the experience with 

 Mr. Heal, who raised the Balsama?-flora section of the East 

 Indian Greenhouse Rhododendrons in this manner. 



I will conclude by quoting a passage from Bacon's " Naturall 

 History," Century vi. § 513. "It is a curiosity also to make 

 Flowers double, Which is effected by Often Removing them into 

 New Earth; As on the contrary Part, Double Flowers, by 

 neglecting, and iiog Remouing, proue Single. And the Way to 

 doe it speedily, is to sow or set Seeds, or Styps of Flowers : and 

 as soone as they come vp, to remoue them into New Ground, 

 that is good/' 



ON THE ECONOMIC USES OF BAMBOOS. 

 By Mr. A. B. Fbeemax Mitfokd, C.B., F.R.H.S., F.L.S. 



:Eead July 26, 1898.] 



There is an old Chinese proverb which says, " Better meals 

 without meat than a house without a Bamboo." To our western 

 ears, accustomed as we are to the shy and lagging growth upon 

 which alone the Bamboos venture in a climate that shows them 

 but poor favour, such a saying may seem to smack of extrava- 

 gance. How can these puny rods, so tender in their birth that 

 a breath of the summer wind, or the weight of a perching 

 wren, will snap them in sunder, play any foremost part in the 

 great struggle for life ? But those who go down to the sea in 

 ships and do business in great waters, having seen these grasses 

 at home in all their lusty pride, and having noted the thousand 

 and one ways in which they are made to do service, will perforce 

 own that there is some reason in the proverb, and that, at 

 any rate, there is not among the kindly fruits of the earth a 

 plant more intimately bound up with the life of man. Consider 

 for a moment the matter of size, and size only. Exalted almost 



