tinct varieties: one a large growing kind,
erect nearly to the point; a second smaller, seldom rising much above
twenty feet in height, bushy at the base, and gracefully bending down
its tapering point. A third kind rose in single cane, almost without a
leaf, to the height of thirty feet or more; or, bending over, formed a
perfectly circular arch. I also saw a Bamboo growing as a creeper, with
small short joints, feathered with slender leafy branches at every
joint, and stretching in festoons from tree to tree along the side of
the road, or hanging suspended in single lines from a projecting branch,
and swinging gently with the passing breeze. The appearance of the
Bamboo when growing is exceedingly graceful. Sometimes the canes, as
thick as a man's arm at the base, rise forty or fifty feet high, fringed
at the joints, which are two or three feet apart, with short branches of
long, lance-shaped leaves. The smaller kinds, which abound most in this
region, are still more elegant; and the waving of the canes, with their
attenuated but feathery-looking points, bending down like a plume, and
the tremulous quivering, even in the slightest breeze, of their long,
slender leaves, present ever-varying aspects of beauty; and, combined
with the bright-green colour of the Bamboo-cane and leaf, impart an
indescribable charm to the entire landscape."[217]

Glorious in loveliness are the _Musaceae_, the Plantains and Bananas of
the hot regions. Humboldt calls the Banana "one of the noblest and most
lovely of vegetable productions;" and truly its enormous, flag-like
leaves of the richest green, permeated by nervures running transversely
in exactly parallel lines, and arching out in every direction from the
succulent, spongy, sheathed stem, command our admiration, apart from the
beauty of their flowers, or the importance of their fruit.

In a description of a mountain scene in Tahiti, drawn with graphic power
by Charles Darwin, the Banana forms a prominent element:--"I could not
look on the surrounding plants without admiration. On every side were
forests of Banana; the fruit of which, though serving for food in
various ways, lay in heaps decaying on the ground.... As the evening
drew to a close, I strolled beneath the gloomy shade of the Bananas up
the course of the stream. My walk was soon brought to a close, by coming
to a waterfall between two and three hundred feet high; and again above
this there was another.... In the little reces