varying up to eight inches, and is of
wonderful strength, due to its round shape and the regularity of its
joints. Each joint is strengthened by a web inside. It is singularly
flexible, light, elastic, and of matchless floating power. The fibre
is tough, but being perfectly straight, it is easy to split. It has a
smooth glazed surface, a perfectly straight grain, and when split on
any surface, it takes a high polish by simple friction. Three cuts
with the bowie-knife are sufficient to hew down the largest bamboo
of this kind, and the green leaves, in case of extreme necessity,
serve for horses' fodder.

There is another variety also hollow, but not so large as that just
described. It is covered with a natural varnish as hard as steel. It
is also used for native cabin-building and many other purposes.

A third species, seldom found more than five inches in diameter, is
much more solid, having no cavity in the centre divided by webs. It
cannot be applied to so many purposes as the first, but where great
strength is required it is incomparable.

When the bamboo-plant is cultivated with the view of rendering it
annually productive, the shoots are pruned in the dry season at a
height of about seven feet from the ground. In the following wet
season, out of the clump germinate a number of young shoots, which,
in the course of six or eight months, will have reached their normal
height, and will be fit for cutting when required. Bamboo should be
felled in the dry season before the sap begins to ascend by capillary
attraction. If cut out of season it is prematurely consumed by grub
(_gojo_), but this is not much heeded when wanted in haste.

The northern native builds his hut entirely of bamboo with nipa
palm-leaf or cogon thatching; in the Province of Yloilo I have seen
hundreds of huts made entirely of bamboo, including the roofing. To
make bamboo roofing, the hollow canes are split longitudinally, and,
after the webbed joints inside have been cut away, they are laid on
the bamboo frame-work, and fit into each other, the one convexly,
the next one concavely, and so on alternately. In frame-work, no
joiner's skill is needed; two-thirds of the bamboo are notched out on
one side, and the other third is bent to rectangle. A rural bungalow
can be erected in a week. When Don Manuel Montuno, the late Governor
of Morong, came with his suite to stay at my up-country bungalow for
a shooting expedition, I had a wing added in three day