516 



tHE TROPICAL AGRiCUUWKlSr. 



[fmmi&t 1, 1884, 



that it grew more favourably in ricli alluvial soil than on 

 the hills ; certainly, he had himself had samples both from 

 high and low levels, and he thought that the lower gi'ouud 

 plants were the best ; at any rate, thei e was not much 

 difference. As Dr. Watson had said, the finest he had seen 

 was grown in Egypt. '\\'ith regard to Mr. Liggins' questions, 

 no doubt superior cultivation would give a better result than 

 merely trusting to wild plants. It stood to reason that 

 with rheea, like all other plants, cultivation improved the 

 fibre, and a great result would be obtained, and probably 

 a more economic result, if it were carefully attended to. 

 "With regard to close or open planting, he did not know 

 that there were any facts yet ascertained, but his impression 

 was, taken from analogy, that growing rheea for the sake 

 of the fibre, it would be better to grow it rather closely 

 together, because if it were grown far apart, you would get 

 a wide bushy plant, which meant a great number of breaks 

 in the fibre ; the straighter you could have the stem, and 

 the fewer leaves upon it, the better. He could hardly speak 

 as to the nature of the soil, but he thought a rich alluvial 

 soil was best. As to esparto growing in swamps, it struck 

 him as being new, for he always thought it grew on stony, 

 mountainous soil. 



Mr. Koutledge said the esparto grown in .Tamaica was 

 declared by authorities not to be really true esparto. 



Ma. CoUyer said with regard to the quantity of water 

 required for the machine, he was toid by the engineer that 

 it required less than the quantity now used for washing 

 the fibre when prepared by other i:)roce.sEes. As to silk 

 cotton, that hardly came withiu the range of the paper, 

 but he might say the Dutch were far in advance of tis, 

 as he had noticed it in the Amsterdam Exhibition, and 

 in Holland it could be .sold for 8d. per pound, whereas in 

 England you could iiot get 2d. The quality of it was 

 better however. As to the rope, the makers told him the 

 breaking strain was 7,70-5 pounds, which was something 

 greater than a similar rope of best Manilla hemp. The 

 smaller cord, which was made for fishing lines and nut 

 purposes, stood a strain of 80 pounds, and broke at 81, 

 which gives 7 '4 greater strength than the best cjuiUot Manilla, 

 and, at the same time, was 472 per cent hghter. which was 

 12 per cent in favour of the yarn made of this fibre. He 

 coiUd not say the cost, but if it weighed 5 per cent less, 

 and was 7 per cent stronger, he should argue the cost would 

 be much less than if made of Manilla. 



Mr. Liggins asked if it was liable to rot. 



Mr. Oollyer said he could not answer that question, be- 

 cause until this machine ap^x-ared on the field none of 

 this fibre ever came to England in commerci.a! quantities, 

 though he had known it in samples for twenty-five years ; 

 it was, practically, the creation of the machine. He had 

 sent samples to various people, and none gave an unfavourable 

 opinion; the worst was that it was at least equal to Manilla. 

 It was a new fibre brought into the market for the first 

 time, and was the first attempt of the natives to use the 

 mac^hine, so that it had not yet been practically tried. He 

 agreed with Mr. Cross that jute was a degraded fibre, and 

 one of the greatest merits claimed for this machine was 

 that it woidd stop that degradation; that it would give 

 all the fibre nature put into the plant in the purest and 

 strongest condition, for this reason, that the action of the 

 water was peculiar, and different to any other process. 

 When the skm of the plant was broken, all the acids con- 

 tained in it at once set up a deleterious action, and com- 

 menced to injure the plant, but the advantage of this machine 

 was that the deleterious matter anil strong acids, which 

 tended to wi-;iken aiul discolour the fibre, were at once 

 swept away before they could act upon the fibre. Incidental 

 to that was the fact that it did away with the necessity 

 of retting. Wherever this machine went, retting would 

 become a thing of the past, it would have the same effect 

 on flax, if they took the flax young enough. He fu-mly 

 believed it would do away with retting altogether as regards 

 flax, hemp, and every other fibre, including jute. They 

 had to deal with 800,000 tons of jute a-year, 50.000 or 60,000 

 tons of Manilla hemp, and a great many thousand tons of 

 other fibres, which showed what an enormous product of 

 fibre there was throughout the world. He personally claimed 

 for the machine that it was the best for every fibre, always 

 excepting bristle fibres. As to chemistry, it seemed to him 

 the great advantage of this machine was that they did not 

 rrant a chemist at aU, Accurdiog to their belief, rbeea 



was not bast at all; jute was bast. As to the afhnity of 

 rheea for colouring matters, he had lately made a tour 

 amongst the principal manufacturers of Europe, and they 

 all told him of the difficulties that did exist in dyeing 

 it; fast colours had been, by recent improvements, effectually 

 obtained. His information was that, at £30 a ton, there 

 was no limit, practically, to the quantity which could be 

 sold ; at £40, it would go slowly ; at £50, with the pre.sent 

 price of wool, it was barred. One man said to him, " If 

 you bring it down to £35, you will sell a lot; if you bring 

 it down to £30. nobody knows the quantity we can use." 

 In addition to all the present outlets, there were mauy new 

 things constantly coming under notice, such as Mr. Christy 

 had referred to. A new one sprang up only the other daj', 

 and he beheved that in a short time felted carpets would be 

 matle of wood instead of wool. Of course, for a time the 

 increased supply of fibre may have an uiconvenieut effect 

 on the market, but the fittest would survive, and if any had 

 to give way, it struck him it would be the old-fashioned 

 people, not those who had the best fibre, at the lowest price. 



Mr. W. Haworth said jute was not so much bast as rheea, 

 but neitlier was really bast. Bast was always taken from 

 the interior of the bark of a forest tree. Jute was called 

 " a lie," but how was it so much came into consumption? 

 He remembered the fii'st 35 bales shipped from Calcutta as 

 a sample by the East India Company, and when it came 

 home there was gi-eat difficulty in disposmg of it, but now 

 the consumption, in Great Britain, was about 2,2(t0,000 bales 

 of 400 lb. each, and the whole quantity reqiured to be 

 produced in India was upwards of six million bales. If, 

 theieforc, it was an inferior article, there was nothing yet 

 which would take its place, unless it was rheea. He believed 

 the younger persons in the room would see a larger quantity 

 of that come into use even than jute. 



The Chairman, in proposing a vote of thanks to Dr. Forbes 

 Watson, said he woulil say a few woods drawn from his 

 experience in India, where he had superintended the experi- 

 ments instituted by the Government. With regard to this 

 fibre, the rheea plant for these trials was cultivated in the 

 Bot.inic Gardens at Serampore, which was practically on 

 the plains; and Mr. Sandys also cultivated the plant at 

 Baugulpore, which was in the delta of the Gauges. The 

 Government also cultivated it in the Botanic CJardens at 

 Calcutta, in order to enable machinists to obtain a supply 

 to use in their endeavoiurs to design a machine for pre- 

 paring it. In Assam it grew wild, and with regard to 

 its rotting, he might say it was used there for fishing lines, 

 and he did not think any fibre which was liable to rot 

 would be used for such a pm-pose. He had a fishing line 

 from Assam which had been ten years in his posse.ssion. 

 No doubt this plant required careful attention, and as far 

 as he could ascertain from what was done in the Botanic 

 Gardens, Serampnre, the maximum amoimt of crops would 

 be three in the year. But there was another question which 

 had not been touched upon; it was a very quick growing 

 plant, and in that part of India grew best in the rains, and iu 

 Calcutta during the hot stagnant atmosphere of the rainy 

 season. Eor fourteen days he carried on the experiments, 

 and he had foimd the crop was very different at the end 

 of that time from what it was at the commencement, 

 showing a considerable growth in the stems. It was quite 

 certain that, to secure an excellence in fibre, the stems 

 should be cut at a certain point, and therefore considerable 

 care must be exercised in regidating the growth to enable 

 the crops to be cut in proper succession. All this was a 

 question for the future, because Uttle attention bad as yet 

 been paid to the cultivation of the plant. There were two 

 factories in India where the rheea was prepared, one be- 

 gan by Colonel Thelwall in the Deyrah Dhoon, the other 

 in the Dhoons of Kangra. In these, some attempts to pre- 

 pare the rheea by machinery was made, but the work was 

 done mostly by hand, the method employed being to scrape 

 the fibre after it had been stripped from the stalk on a 

 table with a sensitive machine, namely, the hand and the 

 kuife. This machme of Jlr. Smith's appeared to provide 

 a substitute for the hand iu the film of water which held 

 the rheea up to the scraper, and it would probably be 

 better prop:u-ed by that means, because the way in which 

 it was hehl up was better; all previous attempts had been 

 to scrape the fibre. Mr. Greig asserted that he adjusted 

 the rollers of his machine .so that the fibre was scraped 

 between two knivee, but as the fibre was only about 1-lWOth 



