INDIAN HEMP. CHINA GRASS. 93 



quence not considered very profitable for cultivation, 

 and is only partially grown on small plots near the 

 houses of some of the natives, and this more for the 

 leaves and tender shoots, which are used by them as 

 an article of food, than for the value of the fibres 

 they produce. In preparing these filaments, the 

 plant requires much longer steeping in water than 

 hemp, a fortnight or three weeks being scarcely 

 sufficient for its perfect maceration. 



The gunny bags in which sugar and other similar 

 commodities are brought from India to this country 

 are made of this material. 



The JEschynomene cannabina, or Dooncha of 

 Bengal. This plant is never found growing wild in 

 India, but is cultivated there. The hemp made from 

 its fibres, though coarse, is much employed. When 

 Calcutta port was blockaded by Admiral Suffrein, 

 masters of ships were reduced to use cables of 

 doojicha, which proved perishable, and many ships 

 are said to have been lost from this circumstance. It 

 is, however, considered in India as more durable in 

 water than sunn or jute, and is employed for the 

 drag-ropes of fishing-nets. 



The Sansevicra Zeylanica is a perennial plant, 

 which grows wild under bushes in the jungle. It is 

 very abundant, and flowers from January to May. 

 Its leaves, three or four feet long, contain fine, 

 strong, white fibres through their whole length. 

 The natives prepare it by placing the leaf on a 

 smooth broad table, holding it down by putting 

 their great toe on one end of it, and then scraping 

 it with a thin piece of hard wood held in both 

 hands. Forty pounds of leaves thus scraped will 

 render one pound of clean dry fibres. The ma- 

 terial is recommended, as excellent, by Dr. Rox- 

 burgh, who thinks the " China grass," used by the 

 Chinese for fiddle-strings, fine fishing-lines, &c., is 

 nothing else than .this plant. It is sometimes called 



