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lowlands have proved to resist our occasional night frosts 
of the low country. But in colder places the many sub-alpine 
species could he reared. Be it remembered that Chusque 
aristata advances to an elevation of 15,000 feet on the 
Andes of Quito, indeed to near the zone of perpetual ice. 
Arundinaria falcata, A. racemosa and A. spathiflora live on 
the Indian highlands, at a zone between 10,000 feet and 
11,000 feet, where they are annually beaten down by snow. 
We may further recognize the great importance of these 
plants, when we reflect on their manifest industrial uses, or 
when we consider their grandeur for picturesque scenery, 
or when we observe their resistance to storms of heat, or 
when we watch the marvellous rapidity, in which many 
develope themselves. Their seeds, though generally only in 
long intervals produced, are valued in many instances higher 
than rice. The ordinary great Bamboo of India is known 
to grow 10 feet in 40 days, when bathed in the moist heat of 
the jungles. The Bourbon Bamboo forms an impenetrable 
sub-alpine belt of extraordinary magnificence in yonder 
island. One of the Tesserim Bamhusas rises to 150 feet, 
with a diameter of the mast-like cane sometimes measuring 
fully 1 foot. The great West Indian Arthrostylidium is 
sometimes nearly as high and quite as columnar in its form, 
while the Dendrocalamus at Pulo G-eum is equally colossal. 
The Platonia Bamboo of the highest wooded mountains of 
Parama sends forth leaves 15 feet in length and 1 foot in 
width. Arundinaria macrosperma as far north as Phila- 
delphia rises still in favorable spots to a height of nearly 
40 feet. Through perforating with artistic care the huge 
canes of various Bamboos musical sounds can be melodiously 
produced, when the air wafts through the groves, and this 
singular fact may possibly be turned to practice for checking 
the devastations from birds on many a cultured spot. 
Altogether 20 genera with 170 well-marked species are 
circumscribed by General Munro’s consummate care ; but 
how may these treasures yet be enriched, when once the 
snowy mountains of New Guinea through Bamboo jungles 
become ascended, or when the alps on the sources of the 
Nile, which Ptolemseus and Julius Csesar already longed to 
