As numerous irregular flowers have stamens of different lengths, this experience opens out a new field for experiments with Labiata, Scrophularineæ, Leguminosæ, &c.

M. Verlot observes that when plants are cut back early to make dwarf plants of them, though it may usually only affect the individual plant, yet he thinks that if it be habitually submitted to this treatment, the seeds are subsequently more likely to give rise to dwarf plants.

As an illustration, the writer has lately had occasion to notice a tennis lawn, part of which was returfed from a field last winter. The whole has been left to grow uncut. The result is that while the new turf rapidly grew tall, as it would have done in the field if left for hay, the old lawn-turf and other flowering plants mixed with the grass have remained more or less in a much dwarfer condition.

Similarly, Mr. Veitch found that cuttings from the miniature trees made by the Japanese and struck in a border refuse to grow. If, however, they be grafted on other and vigorous plants of the same kind, they then grow out vigorously. It would be interesting to see if seeds of such tiny trees produce dwarfs also.

It would seem, therefore, probable that whatever causes tend to check growth, if persisted in long enough, may in time have an hereditary effect.

It would be therefore advisable to try experiments besides the repeated pricking out alluded to :-(1) Reducing the roots; (2) reducing the foliage; (3) cutting off the terminal shoots; (4) selecting small seeds; (5) crossing with pollen from the smaller stamens, wherever there is an inequality; (6) using pollen from the smallest flowers on the plant; (7) poor soil.

Double Flowers.-These result from various alterations in the structure of flowers, coupled with an increase in the number of petals. The question is, what are the causes which induce the production of double flowers? M. Verlot observes: "A rich soil, a culture inducing a luxuriant vegetation, are those under the influence of which we see duplication generally to arise in our gardens."

On the other hand, Mr. Barron observed that: "Double flowers growing on a sandy soil at Sutton keep truer to doubling than on a wet, heavier soil at Chiswick." Mr. Wolley Dod

corroborates this fact, for he says that his own cold and wet soil tends to make his double daffodils to become single.

Mr. Darwin, some fifty-five years ago, noticed and described, in the Gardeners' Chronicle (1843, p. 628), some double flowered Gentiana Amarella, "which grew on a very hard, dry, bare, chalk bank." Similarly he found on an adjoining field of "wretchedly sterile clay great numbers of Ranunculus repens, producing half-double flowers." He then asks the question, "Is it, then, too bold a theory to suppose that all double flowers are first rendered, by some change in their natural condition, to a certain degree sterile?" When a double-flowering plant has this affection well fixed in its constitution, then it would seem that it is benefited by a rich soil; "petalody" having set in, it may affect every part of the flower--stamens first, then pistil or calyx, and finally the petals may be multiplied indefinitely, so that a flower of the double stock may contain more than fifty petals.

That the petalody can be "in the blood," so to say, is seen from the fact that, as no seed can be raised from a "perfectly" double stock, they can be procured from the "single" flowers. For by suppressing the anthers of flowers before they shed their pollen, the seeds (M. Verlot observes) developed in the ovaries of these flowers produce double-flowering plants with great facility-viz. 60 to 70 per cent. If the anthers be not removed, then the percentage drops to 20 to 30 of double-flowering offspring, the number of seed being reduced to five or six in a pod, which produced double-flowering plants, instead of from forty to fifty.

As another influence, that of age may be mentioned. Thus, seed of Matthiola annua, sown immediately after being gathered, produced few double-flowering plants; while seed three to four years old produced many. Wallflowers gave

similar results.

Yet another fact may be mentioned which bears out the same contention. It is found that old, strong root-stocks of Dahlias produce strong growing plants, but they do not "double" well. Heavy foliage and rich colouring are, as a rule, adverse to doubling.

The conclusion to be drawn from the above facts is that it is not a rich soil which first induces doubling, but a poor one; but

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 Balsamæ-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. § 513. "It is a curiosity also to make Flowers double, Which is effected by Often Removing 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 extravagance. 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

above all the trees of the field in its own country is the Burmese Bamboo (Dendrocalamus giganteus). It is worth the trouble of a voyage to Ceylon to see the beauty of the Peradeniya Gardens, near Kandy. But in that Paradise, where all the treasures and wonders of the tropical flower-world are gathered together in wildest wealth of colour and form, nothing is more striking than this huge Bamboo. Picture to yourself great clumps of a hundred or more canes, from 20 to 30 inches round and 135 feet high, spurning the earth in their heavenward flight, and bending their graceful heads on all sides, like great showers of sky-rockets hurtled into mid-air! Such figures as these sound like drawing the long bow, yet are they sober truths, grounded upon official measurements given me by the Director of the Gardens. Here, by way of proof, is a piece of one of these culms, by no means chosen as one of the greatest, but taken at haphazard, 27 inches round, which, from its size and structure, will at once suggest some of the many necessities to which the ingenuity of man may apply such a plant. At the same time I must point out to you that, looked at from the point of view of usefulness, this Burmese giant, beautiful as it is, takes no very high place amongst its kin. It is, as you can see, very hollow, the walls being a mere shell in proportion to the height and girth of the culm-the fibre of the wood is loose and spongy, it dries quickly and is then apt to splinter, but when used as a water-pipe and so kept moist it lasts well. The specimen now before you has been soaked in linseed oil in order to preserve it; the quartermaster on board ship who did this for me, told me that it sucked up the oil almost as fast as he could pour it in. He was quite amazed at the amount of oil which it drank in. I must say that I was rather astonished during a visit which I paid to Ceylon last winter to find that the only Bamboos which have been planted there to any great extent are this Dendrocalamus giganteus and the very inferior native Una (Bambusa vulgaris), which is even more shelly and more easily split. Here you see a fair specimen of its quality. A child might almost crush it in its little hand. And yet the value of the tribe is fully recognised. Seeing that on almost all the tea estates which I visited Bamboos were growing, I asked the Chairman of the Ceylon Planters' Association whether they were cultivated for use or for ornament. His answer was to the point: "For use. I had not the least idea of the many uses of

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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 introduced 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 Maldive Islands to Galle, "which was entirely built, rigged, provisioned, and laden with the produce of the Cocoanut Palm." 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 confessed that here we score a point, though it be one of negation. *Sir Emerson Tennent's Ceylon, vol. i. p. 119. Ibid. vol. ii. p. 109.