532 



THE TROPICAL WORLD. 



him from the gun of the fowler beneath, and owed his life to the distance betwixt 

 them. The wild fig tree, as large as a common English apple tree, often rears itself 

 from one of the thick branches at the top of the mora ; and when its fruit is ripe, to it 

 the birds resort for nourishment. It was to an indigested seed passing through the 

 body of this bird, which had perched on the mora, that the fig tree first owed its 

 elevated station there. The sap of the mora raised it into full bearing ; but now, in 

 its turn, it is doomed to contribute a portion of its own sap and juices towards the 

 growth of different species of vines, the seeds of which also the birds deposited on its 

 branches. These soon vegetate and bear fruit in great quantities; so what with their 

 usurpation of the resources of the fig tree, and the fig tree of the mora, the mora, 

 unable to support a charge which Nature never intended it should, languishes and 

 dies under its burden ; and then the fig tree and its usurping progeny of vines, 

 receiving no more succor from their late foster-parent, droop and perish in their turn." 

 Our stateliest oaks would look like pigmies near this "chieftain of the forests," who 

 raises his dark green cupola over all the neighboring trees, and deceives the traveler, 

 who fancies that a verdant hill is rising before him. Its wood is much firmer than 

 that of the fir. 



The graceful tapering form of the Graminece, or grasses, belongs to every zone; 

 but it is only in the warmer regions of the globe that we find the colossal Bambusacece, 

 rivaling in grandeur the loftiest trees of the primeval forest. Such is the rapidity 

 of their growth, that in the Royal Botanical Garden of Edinburgh, a bamboo was 

 observed to increase six inches a day in a temperature of from 65° to 70°. The 

 Bambusa gigantea of Burmah has been known to grow eighteen inches in twenty-four 

 hours ; and as the Bamhusa Tulda in Bengal attains its full hight of seventy feet in 

 a single month, its average increase can not be less than an inch per hour. In New 

 Grenada and Ecuador the Guadaa, one of these giant grasses, ranks next to the 

 sugar-cane and maize as the plant most indispensable to man. It forms dense jungles, 

 not only in the lower regions of the country, but in the valleys of the Andes, 5,000 

 feet above the level of the sea. The culms attain a thickness of six inches, the single 

 joints are twenty inches long, and the leaves are of indescribable beauty. A whole • 

 hut can be built and thatched with the guadua, while the single joints are extensively 

 used as water vessels and drinking cups. 



India, South China, and the Eastern Archipelago are the seats of the real bamboos, 

 which grow in a variety of genera and species, as well on the banks of lakes and rivers 

 in low marshy grounds, as in the more elevated mountainous regions. They chiefly 

 form the impenetrable jungles, the seat of the tiger and the python. Sometimes a 

 hundred culms spring from a single root, not seldom as thick as a man, and towering 

 to a hight of eighty or a hundred feet. Fancy the grace of our meadow grasses, 

 united with the lordly growth of the Italian poplar, and you will have a faint idea of 

 the beauty of a clump of bamboos. 



The variety of purposes to which these colossal reeds can be applied almost rivals 

 the multifarious uses of the cocoa-nut palm itself. Splitting the culm in its whole 

 length into very thin pieces, the industrious Chinese then twist them together into 

 strong ropes, for tracking their vessels on their numerous rivers and canals. The 

 sails of their junks, as well as their cables and rigging, are made of bamboo ; and in 

 the southern province of Sechuen, not only nearly every house is built solely of this 



