he bamboo is one of
the three tropical plants which Nature, in her beneficence and care,
seems to have given to man to supply most of his wants. And here I
cannot forbear dedicating a few lines to the description of those
three products of the tropics, viz: the bamboo, the cocoa-nut tree,
and the banana-plant.

The bamboo belongs to the gramineous family; it grows in thick groves,
in the woods, on the river banks, and wherever it finds a humid
soil. In the Philippines there are counted twenty-five or thirty kinds,
different in form and thickness. There are some of the diameter of the
human body, and hollow in the interior: this kind serves especially
for the construction of huts, and for making vessels to transport
and to keep water. The filaments are used for making baskets, hats,
and all kinds of basket-work, cords, and cables of great solidity.

Another bamboo, of smaller dimensions, and hollow within, which
is covered with varnish, almost as hard as steel, is employed in
building Indian houses. Cut to a point it is extremely sharp, and is
used for many purposes. The Indians make lances of it, and arrows,
and fleams for bleeding horses, and lancets for opening abscesses,
and for taking thorns or other things out of the flesh.

A third kind, much more solid, and as thick as one's arm, and not
hollow within, is used in such parts of the buildings as require sold
timber, and especially in the roofing.

A fourth kind, much smaller, and also without being hollow, serves to
make the fences that surround enclosed fields when tilled. The other
kinds are not so much employed, but still they are found to be useful.

To preserve the plants, and to render them very productive, the shoots
are cut at ten feet from the ground. These shoots look like the tubes
of an organ, and are surrounded with branches and thorns. At the
beginning of the rainy season there grows from each of those groves a
quantity of thick bamboos, resembling large asparagus, which shoot up
as it were by enchantment. In the space of a month they become from
fifty to sixty feet long, and after a short time they acquire all the
solidity necessary for the various works to which they are destined.

The cocoa-nut tree belongs to the palm family: it requires to grow
seven years before it bears fruit; but after this period, and for
a whole century, it yields continually the same product--that is,
every month about twenty large nuts. This produce never fails, and