a 
_ Vegetable Materials for Cordage, &c. 
5. The most singular vegetable fibre convertible into cordage, is 
the production of a Sago Palm, first named Saguérus by Rum- 
phius,* who gives a long and interesting account of it, and an excel- 
lent plate of the tree, showing the mode of growth of the fibre. The 
common name of the fibre in India is Ejoo. In the Island of Suma- 
tra, according to Marsden,y it is called Anou. It resembles black 
horse-hair. ‘‘ Each tree produces six leaves in the year, and each 
leaf yields ten and a half ounces of the fibre, which makes the an-’ 
nual produce of each tree nearly four pounds. Some of the best 
trees produce full one pound of the fibres in each leaf. They grow 
from the base of the footstalks of the leaves, and embrace completely 
the trunk of the tree. The fibres and leaves are easily removed 
without injuring the tree.”{ Crawfurd says “ It is used for every 
purpose of cordage in India, domestic and naval, and is superior in 
quality, cheapness and durability, to the cordage manufactured from 
the fibrous husk of the coco-nut.” Cables made of this unique 
production, are occasionally brought from India, but not as an article 
of commerce, into the U. States. It is presumed. that this was the 
cordage brought by the ship Ajax a few years since into New York, 
and called ‘ Palm tree cordage,” 
6. In Italy, the Hibiscus roseus, Thore, has been within a few years 
employed for small cordage, by Signor Barbieri, curator of the bo- 
tanic garden at Milan, who two years since sent a specimen of a cord 
made of it, with some of the seeds of the plant, to “ the Philadelphia 
Society for promoting agriculture,” which were distributed. The 
plant abounds in the marshes of Italy, and grows twelve feet high. 
It is a perennial, and as it is therefore not liable to the same expense 
and attention required by common hemp or flax, it may lay claim to 
some exclusive advantages over these plants. §. Barbieri did not 
state the comparative advantages of flax and the Hibiscus roseus, a8 
to the separation of the fibre, a point by the way, of great conse- 
quence. The people of Cumberland Co. New Jersey, have Jong 
~ * Herbarium Amboynense, Vol. 1. p. 57, plate 13: 
of Loureiro, Flora Cochin Chinensis, p. 618 ; and Arenga saccharifera of I bil 
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ed 
+ Roxburgh, Trans, Soc, Arts. Lond. Vol. 24, p. 152. 
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