296 ON THE TREE MALLOW. 



wildness, recommended its fibre for paper making. He also used 

 it in his garden for tying instead of bast ; but the use of its seeds 

 as cattle food does not seem to have occurred to him." In a 

 syllabus of lectures on substitutes for paper material, delivered 

 by Dr W. Lauder Lindsay at Perth in 1858, the " tree mallow " 

 is named in conjunction with the common mallow, in a list of 75 

 paper-yielding plants. In September 1875 Dr W. L. Lindsay 

 directed my attention to an article " On the ]\ianufacture of Hemp 

 and Paper from the Lavatera arhorea^' which was read before the 

 Eoyal Dublin Society on the 25th of March 1859 by Mr Eobert 

 Plunkett, and published in the " Natural History Eeview " for 

 that year. Having failed to obtain a copy of that publication in 

 Edinl3urgh, I applied to Dr D. Moore of the Glasniven Botanic 

 Gardens, who being equally unsuccessful in Dublin, kindly had 

 the article copi.ed verbatim, and sent to me on the 16th 

 of December last, — from which it appears that at the said meet- 

 ing were exhibited " products of the sea tree mallow, patented by 

 William George Plunkett, July 29, 1857. No. 2069." These 

 products were taken from plants over 6 feet in height, that were 

 sown in spring and cut in October ; as w^ell as from a. year and 

 half old plants of 10 feet in height. They consisted of three 

 specimens of hemp, made from the bark of the stems and 

 branches ; card boards made from the fibre and wood of the 

 plant, of which those from the wood were lightest in colour ; 

 together with five kinds of rope and cordage ; but no paper seems 

 to have been shown. Mr Plunkett having, however, sent a series 

 of specimens to Mr Cooke of the Trinity House Museum, 

 Lambeth, that gentleman, in a contribution to " The Art 

 Journal" for the 14th of January 1859, stated that "another 

 patent, or rather series of patented paper pulps, are those of Mr 

 Plunkett of Dublin, whose papers are made from four different 

 kinds of plants. These are the tree mallow, red clover, hop 

 bine or straw, and the yellow water iris ; to the first of these we 

 may look perhaps for the most satisfactory result." Mr Cooke 

 farther added, that " specimens of the plant, wood, hemp, cordage, 

 fine thread, and lace made from the bark, together with paper 

 made from the wood, I shall be happy to show any one interested 

 in the experiment." This employment of the heart-wood 

 for paper-making is confirmatory of the anticipated use of it as 

 stated in my previously recorded letter to the Highland and 

 Agricultural Society, page 287. In a recent conversation with Dr 

 D. More, he told me that, when at the Brussels Great Centennial 

 Horticultural Exhibition last spring, the cultivation of the 

 Lavatera a7^horea for papermaking in Belgium was then talked of 

 by several gentlemen he met. But it is feared that Belgian 

 winters are generally too severe to admit of this being done suc- 

 cessfully. The " Gardeners' Chronicle " of 11th November last 



