FIBRES AND PAPER-MATERIALS. 165 



ages created a constant demand upon the supply of 

 fibrous material in the Vegetable Kingdom ; but to 

 these two other channels for the consumption of that 

 material have been added in modern times. There is 

 a constant and considerable demand for certain stalks 

 and fibres of vegetable origin for the manufacture of 

 various kinds of brooms and brushes, and vastly 

 more important there is now an enormous demand 

 for fibrous material, either fresh, or in the form of 

 rags, for the manufacture of paper. As many fibres 

 are thus used both for textiles and for paper- 

 maki-ng, it will be inconvenient to enumerate them 

 entirely separately. It may be premised that vege- 

 table fibres fall practically under three categories as 

 to their origin. They are either hairs from the seeds, 

 consisting of unaltered cellulose, or they are the ligni- 

 fied bast-fibres or inner bark mostly of Dicotyledons, 

 or, lastly, they may be the entire fibre-vascular bundles 

 of Monocotyledons. With the exception of cotton, 

 derived from the seeds of various species of Gossy- 

 pitim, the first class are unimportant, having no 

 staple, and being, accordingly, only used for stuffing 

 cushions, etc., and that, as a rule, only locally. 



In volume ix. of the ' Encyclopaedia Britannica ' 

 (1879) Mr. James Paton gives a very complete table, 

 compiled from Dr. H. Miiller's Pflanzenfaser in Hof- 

 mann's 'Bericht uberdieEntwickelungder chemischen 

 Industrie.' This enumerates the source, locality, and 

 principal uses of all vegetable fibres hitherto em- 

 ployed for textiles and cordage, etc., to any consider- 

 able extent. It includes (pp. cit., p. 132) 20 fibres 

 of the first of the above-mentioned three classes, 43 



