58 NEW ZEALAND FLAX 
muka. The leaves of the plant are perennial, hard, sword- 
shaped, from five to seven feet in length, with a flower-stalk 
rising four or five feet above them, and bearing a profusion 
of yellow flowers, followed by triangular seed-vessels, filled with 
flat and thin black shining seeds. According to Salisbury, 
three-year old plants yield on an average, thirty-six leaves, 
beside offsets from the roots. Six leaves produced one ounce 
weight of dry fibres, after being scutched and cleaned; and he 
calculated that an acre cropped with these plants, three feet 
apart (but they could not be placed so near without inter- 
fering with each other), will yield more than sixteen ewt. 
“ The leaves are cut when full-grown, macerated in water for 
a few days, and then passed under a weighted roller.” The 
natives of New Zealand cut the leaves when full-grown, and 
separate the fibres while yet green. Mr. G. Bennett states 
that a lateral incision is made with a large shell on each side 
of the leaf, merely to cut through the epidermis, which is first 
removed, and then, what he calls the internal epidermis, pro- 
bably a part of the cellular tissue, “‘ which agglutinates the 
fibres, and, if not removed, deteriorates the flax.” The prin- 
cipal operation is scraping with the shell, and then separating 
the fibres with the thumb-nails, and then employing combs for 
a more minute separation. The fibres are subsequently dried 
in the sun, and are perfectly white; some stout and strong, 
others fine and silky. It is said that “the plant may be 
shorn of its leaves in the morning, and before the sun has set 
be ready for weaving into cloth.” The same thing may, no 
doubt, be done with others of these naturally white endoge- 
nous fibres. Considerable quantities were at one time im- 
ported, and a factory was established by Capt. Harris for 
their manufacture, but the supply seems to have been irregular, 
and now to have fallen off rather than increased. 
Mr. J. Wood, in the year 1844, in a communication to the 
Agricultural Society of India, called attention to the New 
Zealand Hemp, as a plant which was very hardy and would 
thrive in any soil or climate, but that it preferred swampy 
lands. He stated that it was often met with in New Zealand, 
thriving three or four feet under sea-water, (but itis also found 
at some distance from the sea-shore). He therefore thought 
the locality of the Soonderbunds, extending from near Calcutta 
