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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 Balsamse-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. § 518. “It is a curiosity also to make 
Floivers double, Which is effected by Often Bemoving them into 
New Earth ; As on the contrary Part, Double Flowers , by 
neglecting, and not Remouing, proue Single. And the Way to 
doe it speedily, is to sow or set Seeds, or Slips 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. Freeman Mitford, C.B., F.R.H.S., F.L.S. 
[Read 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 
