36 Vegetable Mateiials for Cordage, ^-c. 



5. The most singular vegetable fibre convertible into cordage, is 

 the production of a Sago Palm, first named Saguerus 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,f 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. "J 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 roseiis, 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. S. Barbieri did not 

 state the comparative advantages of flax and the Hibiscus roseus, as 

 to the separation of the fibre, a point by the way, of great conse- 

 quence. The people of Cumberland Co. New" Jersey, have long 



* Herbarium Amboynense, Vol. 1. p. 57, plate 13. It is the Boi-assus gomiitiis 

 of Louveiro, Flora Cochin Chineiisis, p. 618 ; and Jlrenga saccharifera of Labil- 

 lardiere, according to Dr. Roxburgh. This last work, I have not seen. Rumphius 

 says it is found on the coast of Java, about Grissek and Samarang, and in the islands 

 of the Molucca Archipelago. It abounds in Amboyna, p. 59. 



t History of Sumatra, p. 77. 



t Roxburgh, Trans. Soc. Arts. Lond. Vol. 24, p. 152. 



