NEW ZEALAND FLAX NEYANDA. 41 



The plant when gathered is reputed to possess good purifying and 

 cooling properties ; when boiled and fried it forms the well-known nettle 

 porridge so much partaken of in Lancashire during the disastrous cotton 

 famine in the sixties. 



The fibres of the nettle plant have lost their reputation somewhat of 

 late years ; this is probably owing to the advent of China grass fibres 

 with thin silky lustre. 



The handling of nettles is no easy matter, owing to the presence of 

 the stings with which the square stem, the leaf stalks and the veins of 

 the upper and lower parts of the leaves are armed. 



Fig. 26 shows a vein of the leaf of the nettle with the stinging 



Fig. 26. Stinging hairs of nettle (magn.). 



hairs standing out prominently and the conical poison bags at the base 

 of insertion, as seen under a high power objective of the microscope. 



Neyanda Fibre (Sanseviera Zeylanica Liliaceae). This is one of 

 the bow-string hemp plants which is indigenous to Ceylon, and is often 

 cultivated in the hothouses of England, as an ornamental or curious 

 sword-like leaved plant. 



Mr John E,. Jackson says : " The leaves are from 1 foot to 2 feet 

 long, rounded on the back and concave or channelled on the face, and 

 about half an inch thick. The usual mode of preparing the fibre by the 

 natives of Ceylon and India, where the plant also grows, is either by 

 retting or by simply beating the leaves and washing out the fibre. 



"Full-grown leaves yield at the rate of 7 '87 per cent, by weight of 

 the green leaves. Owing to the smallness of the individual leaves, they 



