120 BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 



of food of the people. Thousands of tons of the fibre are annually left 

 to perish, from the want of some suitable apparatus for fitting it for 

 the hand of textile manufacturers. Mr. Burke for several years has 

 been experimenting in various ways on the Plantain stem, and neglected 

 no opportunity of proving the success of the inventions occasionally 

 put forth by others ; but he found them all to be unsuited to the pecu- 

 liar nature of the plant. He has been fortunate enough however to 

 invent a machine which fully answers the design, and which carefully 

 and expeditiously clears the fibre from all the vegetable pulp, and leaves 

 it beautiful and white, fit for the manufacture of the coarsest cordage 

 or the finest textile fabrics. The fineness, the strength, and silky ap- 

 pearance of the Plantain fibre have long been known ; but the difficulty 

 was how to make it available at a sufficiently economical rate to super- 

 sede other coarser but more easilv obtainable materials. This, we be- 

 lieve, has been fully achieved by Mr. Burke. His machine, which is 

 patented in England, Prance, Belgium, and the United States, has 

 been successfully proved, and is undoubtedly all that the most sanguine 

 expectations of the inventor could have led him to hope. Some two 

 years since we mentioned this machine, and its successful operation in 

 Montserrat, where a roughly made one had been brought into use by 

 Mr. Burke, but which was sufficient to test the efficiency of the prin- 

 ciple. Since then Mr. Burke visited England, and has succeeded in 

 perfecting his apparatus in a surprising manner. It now appears won- 

 derful that the construction of so simple a piece of machinery should 

 so long have baffled the skill of the best practical engineers and machi- 

 nists of Europe. That such has been the case must be attributed more 

 perhaps to the want of knowledge of the nature of the plants to be 

 operated on, than to any want of skill on the part of previous experi- 

 menters. This knowledge a long residence in the West Indies sup- 

 plied Mr. Burke with, and now he has turned it to profitable account. 

 " One of the patent machines is now in this island. Yesterday Mr. 

 Burke exhibited it in full operation on Green Castle estate, the pro- 

 perty of Mr. Law, in the presence of a large assembly of practical agri- 

 culturists, and the principal men of the island, who went to see the 

 important invention. We noticed that his Excellency the Governor-in- 

 Chief, the Lord Bishop, the Chief Justice, the Archdeacon, Mr. Mus- 

 grave, and other officials were present, as well as Mr. Bispham, Mr. 

 John Gray, Mr. Bourne, Mr. Barrett, Mr. Kennington, Mr. Roden, 



