270 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY, 



Bamboos until I planted them myself." In a climate where 

 Bamboos simply grow for the asking, I should have expected to 

 find the best, the toughest, and the most valuable species intro- 

 duced from China and elsewhere. The pity of it is that time 

 and money, that might have been better spent, should have been 

 lost. 



I am rather anticipating ; but what I have said will serve to 

 show how little attention has been paid even by some of the best 

 of our colonists to a genus which I shall have little difficulty in 

 proving to be a possible source of great profit where the conditions 

 are favourable to its culture. 



There is one plant, the Cocoanut Palm, which disputes with 

 the Bamboo the honour of being the best friend of mankind. 

 This tree, according to the pretty Singhalese fable, pines if it be 

 out of reach of the sound of man's voice, and dies if the village, 

 near which it has thriven, be deserted.* Unless you walk under 

 it and talk under it, it will not flourish. This intense philanthropy 

 is probably accounted for by the fact that the plant requires 

 careful tending and manuring, which it cannot get in the jungle. 

 Be that as it may, there is no doubt that its uses are almost 

 endless. The trunk, the leaves, the blossom, the sap, the nut 

 and its juices, the shell and the fibre which surrounds it — all are 

 turned to account ; and Percival cites the case of a ship which, some 

 forty years ago or more, came from the Maldive Islands to Galle, 

 " which was entirely built, rigged, provisioned, and laden with 

 the produce of the Cocoanut Palm." t But I do not hold a brief 

 to-day for the Cocoanut Palm. I am retained on the other side, 

 and I trust to bring forward such evidence as will ensure an 

 unanimous verdict in favour of my client. There is nothing 

 which the Palm has done for the well-being of man which the 

 Bamboo has not done, and more besides. Indeed, great as may 

 be the merits of this powerful rival, it is open to one blame 

 from which it cannot escape. No more poisonous spirit has 

 been invented to steal away the brains of man than arrack, 

 which is distilled from the sap of the flower-buds of the cocoanut. 

 No such crime can be laid to the charge of the Bamboo, the gifts 

 of which are all good without a single exception. It must be con- 

 fessed that here we score a point, though it be one of negation. 



* Sir Emerson Tennent's Ceylon, vol. i. p. 

 t Ibid, vol. ii. p. 100. 



