313 Canadian Textile Substances. 



For stitching the sheets of birch bark, of which their 

 canoes are made, slender roots of the spruce tree are used. 

 The root is merely slit longitudinally into strips, as thick 

 as packthread, moistened, twisted and applied. The 

 sewing is then payed over M'ith resin extracted from pine- 

 knots by boiling them in water. 



The phormion tenax, although so exceedingly strong, 

 contains some principle soluble in weak alkaline ley and 

 even in soap and water, the removal of which principle 

 reduces its strength below that of most other fibres, very 

 much limiting its utility. The fibre procured by the 

 Indians, in not being weakened by these menstrua, has 

 some advantage over that otherwise invaluable filament. 



It cannot be doubted that every textile fibre of vegetable 

 origin would be a fit material for paper — and it is probable 

 that the toughness of that article, which ought to be 

 extreme, might be made as nearly equal to that of the 

 original material as is consistent with its nature, by 

 reducing it to pulp by sufficiently pounding it, instead of 

 hashing it, (as is usually done,) into particles having little 

 more coherence than is afterwards supplied by sizing the 

 sheet. 



