No. 216.] 171 



yields this fibre, but neither the native nor botanic name is given, 

 nor even the class to which it belongs, so that we are unable to say 

 with certainty whether it is to be met with in any part of our east- 

 ern possessions, or whether we are in a position to make the manu- 

 facturer at home independent of China for this material. He adds 

 that the stock at present in importer's hands in England does not 

 exceed six hundred bales. 



With a view to solve this doubt in our own mind, we turned to 

 Fortune's " Three Years Wanderings in China," naturally expecting 

 to meet in a work written by a professed botanist, and who was 

 sent to that country expressly to gather every information connected 

 with its vegetable products, some detailed and satisfactory account of 

 this useful plant. We have however been disappointed, for he mere- 

 ly offers an incidental remark regarding a plant which may possibly 

 be that yielding the material from which the grass cloth is made, 

 but we have no certain data to establish it as a fact, seeing that he 

 does not allude at all to any finer fabric made from it, but merely 

 observes that, " there is a species of Urtica (nettle) both wild and 

 cultivated, which grows about 3 or 4 feet in height, and produces a 

 strong fibre in the bark, which is prepared by the natives and sold 

 for the purpose of making ropes and cables." Mr. Horsfall it will 

 be seen by the above extract, remarks that the same plant which 

 gives so fine a fibre, yields likewise a substance sufficiently strong 

 for manufacturing, into the largest cables. But this allusion by Mr. 

 Fortune to a fibre prepared from a species of the nettle tribe is in- 

 teresting in another point of view, because it assists in confirming an 

 opinion expressed by Dr. Roxburgh more than forty years ago, and 

 which opinion was based on information received from a friend, a 

 resident of Canton, that the grass cloth of China is made from the 

 same plant that yields the fibre called calovee by Marsden in his 

 History of Sumatra. Now this calovee is also made from a shrubby 

 species of nettle, to which Dr. Roxburgh has given the specific name, 

 tenacissima because of the great strength of its fibre, the strongest in- 

 deed with one exception, of all the vegetable fibres, Europe hemp 

 included, which he subjected to experiment. And while he thus 

 bears witness to the strength of the fibre, he speaks also most favor- 

 ably of its beauty, softness and fineness. He found however some 

 difficulty in preparing it, and was obliged to adopt a different pro- 

 cess to that recommended by Marsden. The plant was first intro- 

 duced into the Botanic Garden, at Calcutta, by Mr. Ewer, the 

 governor of Bencoolen, of which place it is a nativej it is likewise 



