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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 Maidive 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. 119. 
f Ibid . yoL ii. p. 109. 
