MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. 703 



consequently the method of propagating in general use is to cut off and replant 

 the offshoots which form round the base of the tree from its sixth to its 

 sixteenth year. By this means there is no doubt as to sex, for the females 

 produce female suckers and the males produce males. Date trees live more than 

 a hundred years and bear fruit steadily for all but the first few years of that 

 period, the climatic conditions of the country of then- growth being so invariable 

 that the crop hardly ever fails. No wonder the pious Mahomedan looks upon 

 the date palm as the special gift of Allah to the faithful. 



ZOBEIDE. 

 (From "The Pioneer,'" 23rd November 1907.) 



No. XXXIV.— PLANTS USED IN PAPER-MAKING. 



The paper of the ancient Egyptians was made from the stems of a sedge 

 (Cyperus papyrus) which grew on the Upper Nile and other African rivers. 

 Until about fifty years ago the various kinds of modern paper used throughout 

 the world were made from rags. The late Mr. T. Routledge was, I believe, the 

 first to try esparto grass as a substitute for rags. In 1861 he obtained a few 

 tons of this grass from Spain, and his success in manufacturing paper from it 

 led to his taking out a patent for his process. By 1880 the annual consumption 

 of esparto for paper-making alone in this country was about 2,000,000 tons, at 

 which figure it has steadily kept since. Esparto is a perennial grass which 

 forms rush-like tufts of narrow, convolute, grey-green leaves ; it is related to 

 the marram, and, like it, grows on the sea coasts in Southern Spain and North- 

 ern Africa. In the early days of its use for paper-making it fetched as much 

 as £12 per ton ; now, however, owing to the competition of wood pulp for the 

 same purpose, esparto realises only about £3. The grass grows wild, and it takes 

 from ten to fifteen years to grow to a full-sized clump, from which the leaves 

 may be pulled, which is done about July. The best paper is made from leaves 

 that are three years old. It would be worth while to test marram for paper- 

 making ; its leaves are of the same colour and consistency as esparto, and if this 

 grass could be turned to good commercial account the sand wastes of our 

 coasts, where this grass grows luxuriantly, would then become a considerable 

 source of profit. 



The demand for paper-making material soon exceeded the supply of both 

 rags and esparto. It was then that wood pulp, long before known to be 

 suitable for paper-making, attracted the attention of manufacturers. It was 

 tried on a small scale in 1871 and now the quantity imported into the United 

 Kingdom from North America and Northern Europe is over 500,000 tons a year. 

 The bulk of it is obtained from coniferous trees, in Europe the common spruce 

 and silver fir, in North America the hemlock, black, red and white spruce. In 

 addition to these, however, various species of birch and poplar are suitable for 

 the purpose, and where they are plentiful they are largely felled to be made 

 into pulp. Paper being formed entirely of cellulose it can be made from any 



