344 OBSTACLES TO THE UTILIZATION OF NEW ZEALAND FLAX. 
of dressing, bleaching, and dyeing New Zealand flax, that we have not 
yet attained even to suitable processes on the large scale. More par- 
ticularly the invention of suitable machinery, and the devising of ap- 
' propriate chemical processes, appear to be urgent desideranda. 
III. Cost of production and market value. 
On account of the present scarcitv and hiijh value of labour in New 
Zealand, the cost of collecting the wild flax plant and of preparing its 
fibre is unavoidably great, much too great, indeed, to enable the colo- 
nist to offer the dressed flax in the European market at a price nearly 
equal to that of Russian flax, and other similar fibres, with which it 
must compete. The cost of proper cultivation of the plant and pre- 
paration of the fibre under present circumstances would be still 
greater ; so that, even assuming the fibre to be of superior quality to 
its competitors in the market, New Zealand flax cannot, at present, be 
offered at anything like a similar price. Not only, however, has it to 
compete with many fibres of established reputation, which are easily 
and cheaply produced in countries where labour is abundant; not only 
has it to compete, as regards paper making, with rags and other waste 
products of civilization, which are necessarily greatly cheaper than 
such a fibre as dressed New Zealand flax,— but it will have to compete 
with hundreds of fibres of equal or nearly equal value, which abound 
in all our warmer colonies, and occur generally throughout temperate 
and warm parts of the world,— fibres, whose applications will be de- 
veloped in proportion as colonization progresses, and as chemistry and 
mechanics are brought to bear on processes suitable for their prepara- 
tion. My investigations in 1858 convinced me that fibre-producing 
plants abound throughout the world, and that the economical applica- 
tions of their fibre only await the multiplication and cheapening of 
lm 
cal and mechanical processes for its separation and preparation. 
It would thus appear that the experimentalist on New Zealand flax 
works, at present, in the midst of difficulties. It is pretty certain that 
the fined quality of flax can be produced only from the carefully culti- 
vated plant, but the cultivation of the plant is equally certainly 
offer his fib 
<t possible ft 
jute, jinx, and other well-known fibres, and leave him a profit on the sale. 
On the other hand, I am not sanguine enough to say more than that 
