October 21st, 1901.] PROCEEDINGS. V 



and it grows to the height of tliirty or more feet ; there are per- 

 haps twenty or thirty layers of the white bast round the wood. 

 It is common in Jamaica, and the women of the island are very 

 clever in making from it ruffles, caps, and sets of lace, which 

 stand washing. Charles the Second once wore a cravat which 

 had been made from it, and the late Queen Victoria once 

 accepted a bonnet which had been made from the husk of a 

 maize-cob, and the adornments of which came from the white 

 lace-bark of the Lagetta. The men make ropes of the same 

 material. 



The President also brought a thick native blanket, several 

 yards square, which had been made from the reddish bast of 

 one of the timber trees of the Portuguese possessions in South- 

 East Africa. The tree is cut in lengths ; the outer bark is then 

 removed, leaving the bast-layer exposed ; this layer is then slit 

 down, and removed bodily from the wood in the form of a 

 sheet ; the sheet is then beaten out with wooden mallets, in 

 which fine grooves have been cut at right angles to each other, 

 so as to form fine teeth. It was called by the natives ' mputa,' 

 but he could give no information as to the tree which produced 

 it. He had looked through the list of useful trees of British 

 Central Africa, drawn up by a native, Harry Kimbiri, and 

 published on pages 227 to 232 of Sir Harry H. Johnston's 

 British Central Africa (London, 1897), but could not find it 

 included therein. A tree, producing red bast, from which buik- 

 cloths are made, is given under the name of ' mchile,' or 

 'Kalisache'; three other native trees are also mentioned as 

 producing bark-cloths and ropes, viz., ' msumbuti,' ' nangwesn,' 

 and ' mjombo,' but the botanical name of the last-mentioned is 

 the only one given, viz., Brachystegia longifolia. 



The President likewise exhibited specimens of Diotis 

 candidissima, Desf., collected by Mr. Cecil P. Hurst in County 

 Wexford, Ireland. A paper by Mr. Hurst on this plant has 

 been lately read before the Society, and will be found itt extenso 

 in the Memoirs. 



