104 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



worked as well at night as in the day. The cost of the calcium 

 lights to our company was 3| dollars per hour each." 



MACHINES FOR PREPARING RHEA GRASS. 



A short time since there appeared in our columns an advertise- 

 ment from the Government of India offering a reward of 5,000 

 for the production of the best machine for the extraction of fibres 

 from the Hhea grass and preparing it for market. The condi- 

 tions upon which this prize was offered will doubtless be remem- 

 bered by all interested in the subject, and we need not, therefore, 

 refer to them again on the present occasion. The great draw- 

 back which has hitherto prevented the utilization of this grass has 

 undoubtedly been the difficulty of extracting the fibre, the manual 

 process being so expensive as almost to amount to a prohibition, 

 of fibre manufacture being carried on. "Engineering" states 

 that during the last 20 years or so, a number of machines 

 have been brought out for extracting fibre, but none of 

 these have been considered entirely satisfactory. Up to the 

 present time the common mode of extracting the fibre from such 

 plants as the aloe is by soaking the leaves in water till the vas- 

 cular matter has become rotten, and then beating off this decayed 

 matter from the fibre with a wooden mallet, or scraping it off 

 with a blunt knife. This process is not only a slow and nasty one, 

 but is attended with much w r aste of fibre ; it also discolors, and, 

 what is most important of all, weakens the fibre. At the London 

 Exhibition of 1862, two American gentlemen named Sanford and 

 Mallory exhibited a machine for extracting fibre from aloe, plan- 

 tain, or pine-apple leaves. This machine has been used in 

 America, but would scarcely be found either sufficiently simple 

 or cheap for the ryots of India, its cost being about 45. What 

 is wanted is a cheap machine of simple construction, by which 

 the fibre can be easily extracted ; and we think it only due to 

 those of our readers who have contemplated entering the com- 

 petitive list for the above-mentioned prize to state that a machine, 

 possessing, so far as our present information goes, all the neces- 

 sary requirements, has already been invented in India by Mr. Don- 

 ald Cruikshank, representative of the Telegraph Construction and 

 Maintenance Company. No preparation of the leaves is required 

 for this machine ; they are taken to it green, just as they are cut 

 from the bushes, and in the wonderfully short space of 2 minutes 

 the fibre in the leaves is brought out stripped of vascular matter, 

 and in admirable condition. The rotting process not being nec- 

 essary with this machine, the deteriorations in color as well as 

 in the strength and fineness of the fibre, which follow upon the 

 adoption of that process, are avoided. A correspondent of an 

 Indian contemporary asserts that the samples from Mr. Cruik- 

 shank's machine were " fine, delicate, and even ; not one was cut 

 or broken ; and the material would readily fetch 50 a ton in the 

 home market." Assuming that the efficiency and simplicity of 

 the machine is equal to anything that is likely to be set up in com- 



