4.84 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



ill-adapted to the object in view, that they have necessarily 

 failed. 



About this time I called the attention of Mr. Gelston Sanford 

 to the subject, explaining fully my own experience based upon 

 previous experiments, and submitting various specimens of tropi- 

 cal plants which I had obtained from St. Domingo. After an 

 extended course of experiments, Mr. Sanford has succeeded, in 

 producing a machine wonderful for its simplicity and effective- 

 ness. This machine will readily produce an amount of thoroughly 

 dressed fibre varying, according to the kind of plant used, of 

 from three hundred to six hundred pounds per day, and requires 

 only one person to work it. It will soon be put to practical use 

 in the countries in which fibrous plants grow in great profusion, 

 by a company of gentlemen of this city. 



" The following extract, from a work entitled " Tropical fibres, 

 their production and economic extraction," published during the 

 past year, by Mr. E. G. Squier, will sufficiently show the import- 

 ance of the subject as well as the value of this invention : 



In the year 1857, (January 14,) Chief Justice Temple, of Belize 

 or British Honduras, read a paper before the Royal Society of 

 Arts of London, on the resources of that country, which, as is 

 well known, forms part of Central America. Amongst other 

 objects of interest, he exhibited a quantity of the fibre of the 

 plant under notice, pine-apple, as well as of the jigave Sisilana. Of 

 the former, or Bromelia Sylvesiris, he said : " The plant called 

 Bromelia pita istle by the Mexicans, and silk grass by the Creoles 

 of British Honduras, grows spontaneously in the greatest abun- 

 dance. The leaves are of a soft, dark green, from five to thirteen 

 feet long, and from an inch and a half to four inches wide. Along 

 the edge of the leaf, about six inches apart, are short, sharp, 

 curved thorns. When the plant is cultivated these gradually 

 disappear. The fibre which the leaf contains is unquestionably 

 of a superior description, and I have no doubt could be used in 

 every species of textile fabric. I have been informed by leading- 

 manufacturers that this fibre is equal to the best China grass, 

 superior to the New Zealand flax, and capable of being manufac- 

 tured into the finest fabrics," — [Journal of the Royal Society of 

 Arts, vol. 5, p. 125. J In the discussion which took place among 

 the leading members of the society, on the paper of Judge Tem- 

 ple, Mr. P. L. Simmonds, editor of the Mark Lane Express, said : 

 ■'I have, to-day, seen some of the indigenous specimens of_the 



