26 THE LEAF-FIBRE OF NEW ZEALAND FLAX. 
fibre and its utilization in New Zealand itself have been legion. Pa- 
tents innumerable have been taken out; money has been expended b 
thousands of pounds. Nevertheless, no award of any of these attrac- 
tive premiums has yet been made! None of the host of experiments 
made, whether on the large or small scale, has yet come up, as respects 
market success, to the stipulated standard. The history of flax-experi- 
ments in New Zealand is the history of a series of humiliating failures. 
The colonist is forced to confess that he has not yet equalled nor im- 
proved upon the results obtained by the Maoris by mere hand-labour 
and processes of the most primitive kind. He has neither produced a 
finer fibre, nor has he succeeded in dyeing it with more brilliant or 
faster colours. Superior processes of preparation have yet apparently 
to be devised ; while too little attention has hitherto been given to the 
at least equally important subject of the cultivation of the plant, with 
a view to its yielding the best kinds of fibre. Hitherto the colonists’ 
operations have been conducted almost exclusively on the wi/d plant ; 
though, as has been already shown, the Maoris have long recognized 
the superior value of the produce of the cultivated plant. There is, 
however, this other equally cogent reason for cultivation, if it be 
proved that the produce is of sufficient value to warrant the necessary 
expenditure of capital: the native Flax-plant is rapidly disappearing 
before advancing settlement and agriculture, with their concomitant, 
the development of an immigrant flora. Hence the fibre-supply must, 
at no distant date, if the demand grow at all larger, depend o 
the extent to which the plant is cultivated. The great anxiety of 
the settlers to utilize the fibre has arisen in connection with the ap- 
parent enormous waste of available material in the eradication of the 
Flax-plant from the soil, as a basis for agricultural operations, and its 
subsequent destruction by fire. But enough has been said, especially 
on the comparative advantages of using the cultivated plant, to lessen 
materially our regret that so much seemingly valuable fibre-stuff has 
been virtually squandered or neglected. 
The recent New Zealand Exhibition at Dunedin, in 1865, appears 
to have assisted materially in revivifying, after such a series of dis- 
heartening failures, the interest of the colonists in the preparation 
and utilization of New Zealand flax. The Exhibition in question con- 
tained several most instructive suites of specimens illustrative of the pro- 
ducts of Phormium tenax, and their economic applications. Of these, 
