11 



heaven, the trailing garments of departed day, where in the deep 

 blue sky the lamp of the evening star, already gleaming seemed 

 but a benedictive closing of the scene, while that sweet penetrat- 

 ing odor, which drifts so far on the humid night air, published 

 the readiness of the Marvel-of-Peru to receive its anticipated 

 hawk-moth callers,' — its patrons really, — exchanging a drink of 

 nectar for a little help in the way of a few grains of pollen 

 smeared on the stigma of the pistil that seed might mature. — 

 Ernest Waters Vickers in Popular Science News. 



FLOWERING OF THE BAMBOO. 



The bamboos are the largest of the grasses, but unlike 

 our common grasses, very rarely flower. When flowering does 

 occur it is something of an event, as may be seen from the fol- 

 lowing account from the Indian Forester : 



A somewhat remarkable event is taking place in the Chanda 

 district of the Central Provinces, and that is the flowering on a 

 large scale of the ordinary bamboo (Dendrocalaemus strictus). 

 The area over which the flowering extends is estimated at 1,200 

 square miles, and in this area, although a few dumps here and 

 there have escaped, the phenomenon is universal. But the ex- 

 traordinary point about it is that clumps of all ages are flowering 

 — not only mature clumps, but quite slender seedlings of six or 

 seven years' growth, or even less. I send you some specimens 

 to illustrate this; the rhizomes show that those clumps are quite 

 young. Last year the droughts affected the bamboos in the 

 Dhaba Range of this district, and the bamboo flowered over^a 

 small area, and produced a kind of manna. Many thousands of 

 people were kept alive for some weeks on the seed. This year 

 the area is infinitely larger, and the whole population will, in 

 course of time, flock to the forests to gather the seed. 



The consequences to the people in the vicinity of this flow- 

 ering and subsequent death of the bamboo will be rather serious, 

 as for many years to come, they will not be able to find sufficient 

 stores to satisfy the numerous wants of the agricultural popula- 



