276 DRYING OF SUNN FIBRE. 
natives are most liable to fail. He thinks it ought to be 
strongly insisted that they beat the plant (by handfuls at a 
time) on the surface of river water, in order to get rid more 
readily of the filth and mucus with which it abounds after 
steeping. But when the fibre is separated it must be tho- 
roughly washed, by repeatedly squeezing the water out of it, 
and ultimately well wrung, to accelerate the essential process 
of careful drying. The cylinders for pressing Flax when 
moist (v. p. 206) would be useful, as also scutching mills 
properly suited to the fibres to be separated and prepared. 
After the fibrous parts are well separated and well washed, 
they are in some places in Bengal laid in the sun to dry, before 
stripping them. At Jungypore, after washing and beating in 
the water, the Sunn is laid in the sun an hour or two, and the 
stalks are separated when half dried. Mr. Fleming recom- 
mended that after watering the plants forty hours, they should 
be taken out and dried gently in the sun for three or four 
hours, before the fibres are separated. The natives say, that 
to dry the plant on taking it out of the water before separating 
the fibre from the seed, will occasion a much greater loss in 
tow; so that they never practise this method but when dis- 
tressed for time, and under the dread of leaving it too long in 
the water, when any parcel proves too much for the labourers 
employed in one day. Mr. Frushard also objected, that such 
drying must be insufficient, and that in Europe, generally, the 
plant is most thoroughly dried before it is put under the brakes, 
and that in Livonia the Hemp is heaped up, and covered up 
with straw, &c., in order to make it sweat, and that the 
Livonians say, it is in this operation of sweating that the good 
or bad quality of their Hemp depends. 
Mr. Frushard observes, that “the natives get through the 
whole business with so much celerity that their mode of 
practice is highly in favour of the fibre retaining its strength; 
and should sweating be found to answer, it will be found much 
more congenial to its execution than the doing it while the 
fibre is still on the reed.” 
The measures adopted were successful to a great extent. 
Though the natives did not adopt all the innovations which 
had been proposed to them, yet from the supervision practised, 
they prepared the Sunn carefully according to their own 
