Director's An)iual Report. 59 



fibre is said to be in superior demand, and the industry- is sub- 

 sidized b}' a government bounty. 



A well established sisal plantation and mill are in full operation 

 near Honolulu and afford every indication of permanent success. 

 Altogether about six hundred acres are cultivated and the industry 

 is under the management of Mr. A. H. Turner, to whose energy 

 the inception of the introdu(5lion of sisal fibre culture to these Isl- 

 ands is due. The fields exhibit every period of growth, from the 

 uurser}^ stage to plants four 3'ears old in an acftive state of produc- 

 tion. A small plot of ground is also devoted to plants of about 

 eight years growth, but these are older than the plantation and are 

 among the first grown in these Islands. The sisal is propagated 

 either by suckers or "pole" plants. Suckers spring from the root, 

 but pole plants originate in the florescence, and exhibit a distinct 

 form of development. At the age of about eight years the parent 

 plant throws up a central stalk or "pole" sometimes to the height 

 of twenty feet. On this a multitude of blossoms are produced, 

 from each of which as it matures there develops a minute sisal 

 plant which finall}" becomes detached and falls to the ground. 

 Two thousand such plants may be obtained, at a moderate esti- 

 mate, from one parent, and in some cases many more. During the 

 last year the plantation in question has supplied about a quarter of 

 a million pole plants to other growers. Besides these two ordinary 

 methods of reprodudlion poles that have been cut down and allowed 

 to wither have, when moistened by rain, put forth a number of hew 

 plants. Sisal exhibits remarkable reprodu(5tive powder and vitality, 

 and young plants which have been exposed to the sun uuplanted for 

 many months root quickly and vigorously as soon as set out. 



Each successive stage of development is allotted its particular 

 secftion of the plantation, which when visited had recently placed 

 its first harvest of fibre upon the^ market. Japanese laborers were 

 at work severing the leaves close to the stem of the plant and 

 tying them into bundles of one hundred, after first removing their 

 terminal spur. The leaves spring from the parent stock close to 

 the ground and radiate upwards from a central crown. Those 

 more nearly horizontal possess the most mature fibre, but all leaves 

 which come within an angle of sixty degrees with the ground yield 

 commercial fibre. Care is taken to separate leaves of under three 

 feet length from those above, as a standard of two and a half feet 



