YIELD AND PRICE 



CROTALARIA 



JUHCEA 

 Cultivation 



arc repeatedly beaten on a stone with a stick, then lashed on the surface 

 water. This beating and lashing may have to be repeated two or 

 times bffon- ;i thoroughly clean fibre is produced. The hank of 

 now wrung out, to remove the water, twisted and folded into a 

 irtinilar fashion, and hun^ out to dry and bleach. It is then plaited puiuxi TU. 

 rfold into a tail, and in that form is usually seen in the market, but it 

 often been urged that it would be advantageous to discontinue the 

 iliit. of plaiting the fibre. It will thus be noted that regarding each and 

 ,<TV st;i-_'f in the separation and cleaning there is as great a divergence Divergence of 

 opinion as with most other aspects of the industry. 

 If required for textile purposes, however, or even for the string employed 

 the construction of fishing-nets, it is opened out and combed or crudely imperfections. 

 it (hod. In most of the reports furnished in Europe regarding this 

 in- its shortcomings are attributed to incomplete or excessive retting 

 to imperfect cleaning, breaking and scutching, never to inherent defects fetched 

 tin- fibre itself. The loss between washed and scutched fibre is about F 

 ic-third the weight. Hence the difference in price offered does not, 

 a rule, tempt the growers to go in for much cleaning. 



Yield and Price. It is generally said that the finest qualities fetch Price. 

 India about one rupee for five pounds. As met with in the bazars 

 fibre occurs in tangled masses of a dull greyish or greenish-white 

 lour. An official of the Calcutta Custom House, to whom an application 

 made for information regarding the trade in Indian hemp, furnished in 

 )1 many useful particulars. The best country hemp comes from Bombay Grades, 

 id is called Rajpore or Dugaguddi ; it is about four feet long and fetches 

 3. 16 to 18 per cwt. The next best is the Jabbalpur, the value of which is 

 j. 11 to 13 per cwt. The third grade is Phillibit and the last the Bengal. 

 ic exports are chiefly in the most inferior stuff. In Messrs. Ide & 

 ristie's Monthly Circular quotations are made of Allahabad, Jabbalpur 

 id Bengal hemps, and these would seem to average from 14 to 18 shillings, 

 it a particular shade of colour is desired, and parcels with that colour colour, 

 ch higher prices, irrespective of strength, the object being to allow 

 admixture with Russian hemp. Mollison records the yield of an 

 erimental cultivation in Poona. The dried stalks scaled 6,280 Ib. 

 id the cleaned fibre 520 Ib. per acre. Mukerji gives the yield as Yield. 



to 1,200 Ib., or an average of 640 Ib. (8 maunds) per acre, worth 

 3. 50. A sample examined at the Imperial Institute in 1896 was valued 

 15 to 16 a ton in London. 



Properties and Uses of San Fibre. For results obtained by the early Uses, 

 erimenters consult the Dictionary. Although the Indian factories use a 

 lir amount of san in the production of the rope and string generally spoken Rope and 

 " as country-hemp, little or no progress has been made to place the pro- strin &- 

 iction on a sound basis. Madras and Bombay might each have an 

 idustry, which if it did not rival the Bengal jute trade might meet some 

 the markets for that fibre and supply a want for an article of a slightly 

 'her quality. It is indeed surprising that this fibre has not by now 

 come an established and valued feature of the commerce and industry 

 India. Some few years ago, as co-author of a small book on the Indian 

 ?ibres and Fibrous Substances (Cross, Bevan, King and Watt, 1887, 28-30), * 

 I wrote, " It is impossible to urge too strongly the claims of this much- 

 neglected fibre a fibre which seems to have suffered severely through the 

 immense success of jute obscuring for a time the properties of all other 



435 



