yQ KATURAL PRODUCTIONS OF THE EAST INDIES. 



kind of wasliing, coction, or maceration, that I have yet 

 been able to think of, is of any use in cleaning or freeing 

 the fibres from the exterior coat; the best way I have yet 

 tried is scraping off this coat, as they do the pulpy part of 

 the wild plantain, or abaca at Manilla; see Annals of Bo- 

 tany, vol, 1, p. 200; but such a process will, 1 fear, be too 

 expensive for calooee hemp, though I know it is much 

 stronger than any thing of the kind I could ever procure 

 from the plantain tree indeed next to jeetee; this fibre is 

 the strongest vegetable fibre known to me. 



riempfromit. I have put up two small samples of the calooee hemp. 

 No. 1 is prepared as before mentioned, by scraping off the 

 exterior coat as boon as the bark is pulled off. This has 

 been cut and cleaned within these two weeks. No. 2 is the 

 bark peeled off and dried in that state, and is about one 

 year old, consequently done while I was in England. No. 

 1 seems to me to be as clean as the generality of Russian 

 hemp. Pray let Lord Duadonald see this substance, and 

 niake my best respects to his lordship when you see him; 

 he may be able to advise me how to proceed ia cleaning it 

 in the lirst instance. 



Orange dye. Remember me to Dr. Bancroft, and tell him I have not 

 forgot the orange dye, wassuntagonda, a powder procured 

 from the outside of the capsules of my rottleria tinctoria ; 

 I must procure it from a distant country. 



Gum kuteera. I have been this instant looking over the twenty-first 

 Volume of your Society's Transactions, and think it may 

 be agreeable to you to know, that the tree which yields the 

 gum kuteera, page 423, is my sterculia uijens. fSee 

 Coromandel Plants, Vol. /, No. 24. y 



I am, &c. 



W. ROXBURGlf . 



Calcutta, Sepl.-iO, 180?. 



My Dear Sir, 



Since I wrote to you, on the SOtli of September, by the 

 surgeon of the Baring, who cairied for you samples of the 



Malay 



