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necessary in some cases, particularly where ramie will be grown 

 on large plantations, and where labour is scarce and dear, but it 

 has been unwisely put forward by the Indian and other Govern- 

 ments, as an absolute necessity before the cultivation of ramie 

 had been entered upon on anything like a large scale. 



I make bold, however, to say that though hand-stripped China 

 grass will always command the best price for the finest ramie 

 goods, yet for a large number of purposes it is not necessary to 

 deprive the ramie of its outer brown pellicle. The whole bark, 

 pellicle and bast layer, can be easily stripped off in long ribbons 

 by hand, or the process may be aided by passing the canes through 

 corrugated iron rollers to break up the wood and pith of the stems. 



These ribbons, which are known in the trade as brown ramie or 

 rhea ribbons, must be thoroughly dried, and are then baled, and 

 exported : and by those who hold the secrets, these brown ramie 

 ribbons can be debarked and degummed at the same time, pro- 

 ducing a very useful Jilassc. 



This statement, made by me in many letters to growers in remote 

 parts of the world, has given great hope and a considerable 

 stimulus to ramie growers, as they were holding back, unwilling 

 to plant on a large scale, waiting for the introduction of the long- 

 promised, perfect decorticating machine. 



The next process in manufacture is to free the fibre from its 

 gum and to turn it into what is ca.\\ec\ Jilassc. The gums and 

 pectines which bind the ramie fibres together in the bast layer are 

 among the most irreducible and complicated in nature. Some of 

 them are easily soluble in water, others can be reduced by alkalies, 

 but some of them are more intractible, and the object of the investi- 

 gators and chemists who have studied the subject of degumming 

 ramie for the last 50 years has always been to recover the natural 

 white fibre, free of its gums, without injuring its strength or dis- 

 troying its brilliancy. To obtain this result numerous patents 

 have been taken out, and still more numerous processes are kept 

 secret. Some of the processes which were in use some years ago 

 resulted in rendering the fibre so fragile that the yards dissolved 

 in powder after the cloth is woven. Some of the processes still 

 in vogue, render the yarns brittle in the extreme ; but I may, never- 

 theless, say with confidence that the difficulty of degumming has 

 now been solved, and that there are those among us who can 

 teach, if they would, how to degum ramie without destroying its 

 strength or diminishing its brilliancy. 



One of the great arts of the process is to keep the long fibres of 

 ramie intact and parallel so that very little tow is produced in 

 spinning. It is often stated that it would be well to degum the 

 fibre on the fields at the time of gathering and decorticating. 

 This assertion I always contravert as degumming is essentially a 

 scientific process, which must be watched over and directed by 

 scientific experts ; indeed every bale of ramie, and the product of 

 every single crop, must be carefully examined and specially 

 treated on its merits. 



