Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume II.djvu/281

 BAMBOO appearance (according to some accounts he was a cripple), or because he chose his subjects from low life (bambocciate), born at Laaren, near Naarden in 1613, died in Haarlem in 1673. He spent 16 years in Rome, living and working with Poussin and Claude Lorraine, and acquir- ing celebrity by his pictures of the wild haunts of robbers, of mobs at public gatherings and festivals, and other delineations of low life in Rome and its vicinity. In such subjects he was the best artist of his day, but Woiwer- man's superior finish was said to have affected him to such a degree that he killed himself. Many of his pictures are in Vienna, Augsburg, and Florence. He etched plates from his own designs, and excelled as a violinist. BAMBOO (bambusa arundinacea), a genus of arborescent grasses found in Asia, and in the West Indies, but more extensively used in China than any other country. It has a hard woody texture where the plant has attained any con- siderable growth, with hollow jointed stems. These are externally coated with silex, and the plant sometimes secretes the same substance between the joints in lumps, when it is called tabasheer. The Chinese reckon an endless va- riety of it, one Chinese botanist observing that he could not name all the kinds, but would enumerate 63 of the principal varieties. The bamboo occupies an intermediate place be- tween grasses proper and trees, from its size frequently appearing like a tree, but displaying gramineous affinities in its internal structure. Like all grasses, it is nourished from the pith, and starts from the ground at nearly the same tances between the joints from 4 to 6 inches in some varieties, and in others, highly prized, from 4 to 5 feet. The leaves are small and oval, without much diversity of form, but some- BambcM. diameter it bears in maturity. It usually grows to a height of 40 or 50 feet,, and beyond that siee is regarded as extraordinary. In diameter it varies from 1 to 8 inches, and in the dis- Bamboo Leaves, Flowers, and Fruit. times of a reddish and bluish hue. The color of the stems is generally yellow, but the Chi- nese possess secret arts of changing this to chestnut, black, &c. ; the black bamboos are cultivated in the gardens of the rich like any other rare plants, and the emperor is said to have an officer connected with his palace whose sole duty is to attend to the bamboos in the imperial gardens. The culture varies greatly according to the soil, the exposure, and the variety of the plant. It generally requires a sandy soil, where the roots will easily pene- trate, and it is extensively grown along the shores of rivers, partly to give support to the banks, although the plant dies if its roots touch the water. It is always propagated by suckers, for it requires 30 years or more to reach the blossoming period, when the plant produces a profuse quantity of seed and dies. Often all the mature bamboos in a large district flower at once and then die, only the rootstocks re- maining to send up new shoots. The seeds are edible, and in 1812 a famine was averted in Orissa by the general flowering of this grass. In 1864 the bamboo flowered in the Soopa jungles, and about 50,000 people gathered the seed, camping in the jungle for several weeks. Planting generally takes place in the spring and autumn, and requires very slight care; four or five years elapse before a plantation is considered ready to cut, and for this the win- ter season is deemed the best, as the wood is then the hardest. The bamboo may indeed he styled the national plant of China, and the uses to which it is put by the natives are almost innumerable. The young and tender shoots are boiled and eaten, or preserved by the confectioners, and as sweetmeats are deli- cious. The roots serve many curious purposes.