capable of transporting fresh flowers for hundreds of miles. When ripe and hard, they are converted into bows, arrows, and quivers, lance-shafts, the masts of vessels, walkingsticks, the poles of palanquins, the floors and supporters of bridges, and a variety of similar purposes. In a growing state the strong kinds are formed into stockades, which are impenetrable to anything but regular infantry or artillery. By notching their sides, the Malays make wonderfully light scaling ladders, which can be conveyed with facility where heavier machines could not be transported. Bruised and crushed in water, the leaves and stems form Chinese paper the finer qualities of which are only improved by a mixture. of raw cotton and by more careful pounding.

8. The leaves of a small species are the material used by the Chinese for the lining of their tea-chests. Cut into lengths, and the partitions knocked out, they form durable water-pipes, or by a little contrivance are made into cases for holding rolls of paper. Slit into strips, they afford a most durable material for weaving into mats, baskets, window-blinds, and even the sails of boats; and the larger and thicker truncheons are carved by the Chinese into beautiful ornaments.

9. For building purposes the bamboo is still more important. In many parts of India the framework of the houses of the natives is chiefly composed of this material. In the flooring, whole stems, four or five inches in diameter, are laid close to each other; and across these, laths of split bamboo, about an inch wide, are fastened down by filaments of rattan cane. The sides of the houses are closed in by the bamboos, opened and rendered flat by splitting or notching the circular joints on the outside, chipping away the corresponding divisions within, and laying it in the sun to dry, pressed down with weights.

10. Whole bamboos often form the upright timbers, and the house is generally roofed in with a thatch of narrow split bamboos, six feet long, placed in regular layers, each reaching within two feet of the extremity of that beneath it, by which a treble covering is formed. Another and most ingenious roof is also formed by cutting large straight bamboos of sufficient length to reach from the ridge to the eaves, then splitting them exactly in two, knocking out the partitions, and arranging them in close order, with the hollow or inner sides uppermost; after which a second layer, with the outer or convex sides up, is placed upon the other in such a manner that each of the convex pieces falls into the two contiguous concave pieces, covering their edges, thus serving as gutters to carry off the rain that falls on the convex layer.

11. Such are a few of the uses of the bamboo; and these are probably not more than one-tenth of the purposes to which this valuable cane is applied by the natives of India. The quickness with which the bamboo can be cut and fashioned to any purpose is not the least remarkable of its properties. Hooker, one of the most distinguished of English botanists, relates that a complete furnished house of bamboo, containing chairs and a table, was erected by his six attendants in the space of one hour!

12. Of the bamboos there are many species, perhaps fifty in all; some of them natives of Africa and South America, but the greater number belonging to Southern Asia, which is the true home of these gigantic grasses. The species differ in many respects from each other, some of them being thick and strong, while others are light and slender and elastic. In nothing do the different species vary more than in size. They are found growing of all

sizes, from the dwarf bamboo, as slender as a wheatstalk, and only two feet high, to the Bambusa maxima, as thick as a man's body, and towering to the height of a hundred feet.

CAPTAIN MAYNE REID.

29. — FOREST HYMN.

THE groves were God's first temples. Ere man learned To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave,1

And spread the roof above them, - ere he framed

The lofty vault, to gather and roll back

The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood,

Amid the cool and silence, he knelt down
And offered to the Mightiest, solemn thanks.
And supplication. Let me, then, at least,
Here, in the shadow of this aged wood,
Offer one hymn - thrice happy, if it find
Acceptance in his ear.

Father, thy hand

Hath reared these venerable columns; thou

Didst weave this verdant roof. Thou didst look down
Upon the naked earth, and, forthwith, rose

All these fair ranks of trees. They, in thy sun,
Budded, and shook their green leaves in thy breeze,
And shot toward heaven. The century-living crow,
Whose birth was in their tops, grew old and died
Among their branches, till, at last, they stood,

1 archi-trave, the lower division of an entablature.

As now they stand, massy, and tall, and dark,
Fit shrine for humble worshipper to hold
Communion with his Maker. These dim vaults,
These winding aisles, of human pomp or pride
Report not. No fantastic carvings show,

The boast of our vain race to change the form

Of thy fair works. But thou art here, thou fill'st The solitude. Thou art in the soft winds

That run along the summit of these trees

In music; thou art in the cooler breath,

That, from the inmost darkness of the place,

Comes, scarcely felt; the barky trunks, the ground, The fresh, moist ground, are all instinct with thee.

My heart is awed within me, when I think
Of the great miracle that still goes on,
In silence, round me, the perpetual work
Of thy creation, finished, yet renewed
Forever. Written on thy works, I read
The lesson of thy own eternity.

Lo! all grow old and die, — but see, again,
How on the faltering footsteps of decay
Youth presses-ever gay and beautiful youth,
In all its beautiful forms. O, there is not lost
One of earth's charms; these lofty trees

Wave not less proudly that their ancestors
Molder beneath them.

Then let me often to these solitudes
Retire, and in thy presence reassure
My feeble virtue. Here its enemies,
The passions, at thy plainer footsteps shrink

And tremble, and are still. Oh! God, when thou
Dost scare the world with tempests, set on fire
The heavens with falling thunderbolts, or fill,
With all the waters of the firmament,

The swift, dark whirlwind that uproots the woods.
And drowns the villages; when, at thy call,
Uprises the great deep, and throws himself
Upon the continent, and overwhelms

Its cities, who forgets not, at the sight
Of these tremendous tokens of thy power,
His pride, and lays his strifes and follies by?

1. LINNEUS has well called the tall and crested palm

trees "the princes of the vegetable world," for wherever they bloom they enrich the landscape with their grace and majesty. The most perfect of the family have a tall cylindrical stem, which shoots upward from the earth, without knot or blemish, like an Ionic. column; springing to an immense 'height, and yet so symmetrical that its slenderness conveys no idea of feebleness. The summit bears a crown of emerald-green plumes, like a diadem of gigantic ostrich-feathers. These are

6

DATE-PALM.