286 ON THE TREE MALLOW. 



ON THE TREE MALLOW (LAV ATE RA ARBOREA) AS AN 

 AGRICULTURAL PLANT FOR CATTLE-FEEDING, PAPER- 

 MAKING, AND OTHER PURPOSES. 



By William Gorrie, Eait Lodge, Trinity, Edinburgh. 



[Premium — Ten Sovereigns.'] 



Having, on the 4tli May 1870, exhibited a specimen of the 

 highly promising, but hitherto neglected, bunch grass of British 

 Columbia in the Edinburgh Corn Exchange, the young spring 

 growths of which measured at that early period from 3 to 3| feet 

 in height, I was* invited to show it the same day at a conference — 

 between the Directors of the Scottish Chamber of Agriculture 

 and a number of paper-makers from the surrounding districts — 

 " on the practicability of growing a useful material at home for 

 the supply of the paper manufacturers, as a substitute for esparto 

 grass." In reply to inquiries that were there made, I stated that 

 if the straw of ordinary corn crops, and that of our stronger 

 growing native grasses, such as the common reed {Phragmites 

 communis), the reed canary-grass {Phalaris arunclinacea), and 

 others, possessed sufficient tenacity for paper-making, I believed 

 that the bunch grass {Elymus condensatus) would prove equally 

 suitable ; and that a greater w^eight per acre of material could be 

 got from it than from any of the forementioned. In this opinion 

 I am now more fully confirmed, from my original plant, which 

 was reared from seed in 1866, having since annually yielded very 

 dense close crops of both barren or leafy, and fertile or seed-bear- 

 ing stalks, which in each of the past six years measured from 9 to 

 9| feet in height. Having thus been led to look out for " paper- 

 fibre plants," I have now several highly promising exotic kinds 

 under trial, besides that indigenous one which forms the subject 

 of the following^ communication. 



In July 1870 I spent some days near Kildonan, in the south 

 of Arran, when I was much struck with the gigantic size and 

 showy appearance of the many fine tree mallows which were there 

 grown for cottage-garden ornamentation, and had become 

 naturalized in some waste places. Two of the former were found 

 to measure fully 12 feet in height, while few were under 9 feet. 

 In a long, hedge-like belt of the latter I came upon a continuous 

 mass of fibre, stretched among a thick growth of grassy herbage, 

 which turned out to be the only remains of a large mallow plant 

 that had fallen or been broken down the previous season, and all 

 else of which had rotted away. This fibre I took with me, along 

 with a sample of fresh bark ; and having subsequently secured 

 specimens of the matured plants, as well as a supply of the ripe 

 seeds, I handed a portion of each to David Curror, Esquire, 

 secretary to the Chamber of Agriculture, who had the bark tested 



