MADRAS METHODS OF PREPARATION. 281 
‘But when at Bhawani Kudal, in the Coimbatore district, 
he found a great deal of the Shanapu. This was grown by 
the farmers, who, when it is fit for steeping, sell it to the 
people called Telinga Chitties, who make the Hemp, and work 
it up into gon or sackcloth. There it thrives best on a poor, sandy 
soil, which, however, is manured any day between the 12th of 
July and the same day of August. The seed is sown broad- 
cast after rain, and very thick—rather more than two bushels 
for an acre. The stems are sold by the thousand handfuls. 
Tall plants sell at two rupees for the thousand handfuls ; short 
ones for a.rupee and a half. 
But the same plant is also cultivated on fields that have 
produced a crop of rice, between the 12th of January and the 
12th of February. In the following month the field is watered, 
the seed sown, and covered with the plough. Once a month it 
requires to be watered, and it takes four months to ripen. 
This is more valuable than the Hemp cultivated on dry field. 
An acre requires 4% bushels of seed, and its produce was in 
those days worth about £1 2s, 103d. 
Of these two notices the first is interesting, as showing that 
the natives of Mysore adopt a practice, that of drying their 
Sunn stems, which is objected to by those of Bengal. The 
second showing a separation of the occupations of growing and 
of preparing the fibre; and this may, perhaps, with a congenial 
_ climate, account for the goodness of the fibre of the Western 
. coast. : 
Dr. Wight states that on the Madras side of India, not 
‘only the bark of this species, but of Crotalaria retusa is 
exiployed as Hemp in the manufacture of cordage and canvas. 
He further found the Janapa or Sunn plant cultivated at 
Coimbatore. The stems, cut and dried, were afterwards steeped. 
This loosens the bark, which is then easily stripped off, and 
undergoes but little further preparation. He found its fibres were 
next in strength to the yerkum or mudar, sustaining 407 lb., when 
the latter bore 552 1b., and has since observed to the Author 
that the Sunn, grown in the Pass of Poonany, open to both 
monsoons, is stronger than that grown in the interior. 
Dr. Hunter has given the following account of the prepa- 
ration of such fibres near Madras: “The native process 
of cleaning plants having bark and woody fibres’”—of 
