FARMERS' REGISTER. 



[No 2 



chants ol" Hobart's town and Launcerton in Van 

 Dieman's Land are now fully aware ; and having 

 had iheir attention turned to its advantages, tiiey 

 are beginning to prosecute it with ardor. 



From the exnerirnenis of Mon. Labillardiere the 

 relative strength of the New Zealand flax is as 

 follows: the fibres of common flax broke under a 

 weight of llj^ ; of common hemp 16:|: , and of the 

 hllyflax 23 7-11— that is, the New Zealand flax is 

 nearly 50 per cent, stronger than common hemp^ 

 and hilly 100 percent, stronger than conuxion flax. 

 These foliaceous fibres possess also this further ad- 

 vantage over the cortical fi,bres of flax and hemp ; 

 that is of the brilliant whiteness which gives them a 

 satinny appearance, so that the clothes made of 

 them need not be bleached by a tedious process, or 

 through those other means by which the quality of 

 flax and hemp is considerably injured. M. de St. 

 Fond asserts that the fibres may be obtained from 

 the leaves by boiling them \n soap water. Twen- 

 ty-five pounds ol'thespii\ leaves tietl in bundles 

 are immersed into a sutficient quantity ol' water in 

 which three pounds of soap are dissolved. They 

 are all then boiled during five hoin-s until the 

 leaves are deprived of a tenacious gluten or of a 

 gum-resin ; and then ihey are carefully washed in 

 running water. To me it appears this must be an 

 •expensive process — yet as the recent accounts from 

 France siate that the whole expense of the mode 

 now pursued to obtain these fibres does not ex- 

 ceed six francs the quintal, it seems that French 

 ■chemistry must have accomplished the desidera- 

 tum which English mechanics have attempted in 

 vain. Yankee ingenuity, however, has not yet 

 been engaged in the invention ol" machinery to ef- 

 fect the separation of these foliaceous fibres by 

 simple scraping only. It is true that the machi- 

 nery will have to be more complicated than the 

 simple apparatus which will sulTice for the leaves 

 of the Agaves, of the Bromelias, of the Yuccas, 

 and of all other plants with flat sword-shaped 

 leaves without a midrib. The leaf of the New 

 Zealand flax lilly not only has a midrib extending 

 from base to apex, but also towards the butt the 

 sides of the leaf are folded together, and hence 

 simple machinery cannot be easily applied to 

 scrape the entire leaf Nevertheless, the simple 

 splitting of the leaves into two divisions through 

 the midrib may overcome this difficulty. The 

 simple process of shell scraping by the natives is 

 undoubtedly the very best of all to preserve both the 

 strength and the color of these foliaceous fibres ; 

 and hence the high importance of an American 

 invention to effect the same scrapmg by labor sav- 

 ing machinery. It is not, however, absolutely 

 essential that machinery shall be discovered to 

 render the propagation of the flax lilly profitable 

 in Florida and m our southern states. Its generic 

 name alone, derived from Phormos, a basket, was 

 given in allusion to one of the uses made of the 

 entire leaves of the plant in its native country. 

 All travellers have spoken with pleasure of the 

 varied uses of the leaves by these rude people for 

 domestic manufactures. Besides their baskets, 

 their mats have excited many encomiums. Some 

 mats are said to be of a peculiarly fine and glossy 

 texture, with deep borders of various devices and 

 different colors worked all round; the style of 

 which, even to a Parisian belle would appear 

 chaste and fashionable. Even the dresses of the 

 natives were made of those leaves, split into 3 or 



4 slips, and when dry, interwoven into each other 

 so as to form a kind of stufl^ between netting and 

 cloth, with all the ends, 8 or 9 inches long, hang- 

 ing out on the upper side, like shag or thrumb 

 matting. They also made a sort of cloth as coarse 

 as the coarsest canvass, but it was "ten limes as 

 strong." Immense fisliiiig nets we have seen, 

 are made by simple tying together slips of the 

 leaves. Of the uses to which the entire leaves 

 and slips of the leaves would be converted to in 

 the United States, some idea may be formed by a 

 reference to the ingenious industry of our coun- 

 try women in the manufiictures of hats, bonnets, 

 &c. fiom the leaves of palms and the stalks of 

 grasses. From strips of the leaves of this flax 

 lilly, hats, bonnets, baskets, &c. would soon be 

 made of much greater beauty, strength and dura- 

 bility than even the celebrated costly hats of Pa- 

 nama; and the price would be reduced proportion- 

 ately as much as it has been reduced in the price 

 of similar articles now manufactured on the farms 

 and in the families of the New England states, 

 when compared vvith the sum at which they were 

 sold when imported from other countries. Hence 

 the propagation of this single plant alone on the 

 worst soils of the Southern Stales, would not only 

 cover them with a dense population of small culti- 

 vators, but might also triple that rural population 

 by giving employment to their families in really 

 domestic manufactures. At all events the nume- 

 rous small cultivators of the south would thus be 

 enabled to furnish the cheapest possible raw mate- 

 rials for the numerous small manufacturers of the 

 north; and would thus create a mutually profitable 

 and harmonious dependence of the great masses 

 of population in both sections of the Union on 

 each other. 



The increase of the flax trade with the New 

 Zealanders, may be inferred from tlie following 

 statistical llict.s. In 1828, the export of New Zea- 

 land flax from Sidney to England was 60 tons, and 

 valued at £2,600 sterling. " In 1830. the same ex- 

 ports ascended to 841 tons; and m 1831, to 1062 

 tons, for the English market alone. That this 

 flax lilly can be profitably propagated throughout 

 all our southern states, may be inferred from the 

 liict, that ii is profitably cultivated in the southern 

 departments of France, and from the still more 

 decisive fiict, that it has flourished several years in 

 the open air of Charleston, S. C. For my own 

 part, I have not the slightest doubt that it may be 

 spread over all the worst soils of the southern and 

 southwestern states, especially in the pinewoods, 

 magnolia swamps, and other eversreen fbresis be- 

 tween the Potomac and the JVlississippi. Should 

 it not extend farther inland than the live oak, or 

 within the influence of the saline atmosphere of 

 the ocean, it merits to be spread over the whole 

 extent of country heretofore covered with the live 

 oak. At all events, there is every human certain- 

 ty that the territory of Florida is especially adapt- 

 ed to the flax lilly, and that it might there be ex- 

 tended over millions of acres, as it is in its native 

 New Zealand and Norfolk Island. My convic- 

 tions of its certain success in Florida, are founded 

 on the descriptions of the climate and vegetation 

 of New Zealand given by all travellers. Al- 

 though these islands are situated between 34 and 

 and 48° S. L., yet as they are very narrow in pro- 

 portion to their length, their temperature is more 

 moderate and uniform, and the atmosphere more 



