376 CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 
the benefits to India and the world will be incalculable. For they 
are exceeded by none in fineness, excel all others in strength, 
and may be fitly compared to the trunk of the elephant, which 
can pick up a needle or root up a tree. 
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 
The Author having endeavoured to carry out what he stated 
to be his opinion in his Lecture before the Society of Arts, 
finds he cannot do better than conclude as he did then: 
“The foregoing enumeration will, I hope, be considered 
sufficiently extended to prove that India possesses a number of 
plants, many of them valuable as articles of food, or for other 
properties, and which are capable of yielding very excellent 
kinds of fibre, useful either for Paper-making, for Textile fabrics, 
or for Cordage. They vary in fineness and in strength, as is 
required for the various wants of the arts and manufactures of 
civilised life. It would be easy to extend the list (as has been 
done in this work) with the names of many other plants which 
are already employed by the natives of India, or which have 
been subjected to experiment by Europeans. But it will, per- 
haps, be better to recapitulate the most important of the 
subjects which I have brought before your notice. Neglecting 
the Grasses, which, however, are not to be forgotten, if we want 
a cheap material for paper-making—and this is far from an 
unimportant object, considering the constantly increasing 
demands and the rising prices, of the raw material required for 
this indispensable requisite of civilised life. That paper so 
made will not be devoid of many useful properties I feel well 
assured, from the pleasure I have myself experienced in 
writing these notes on paper made from straw. But it is among 
the white-fibred plants, such as the Moorva, the Aloe, and 
the Agave, also in the Pine-apple, and, above all, in the Plan- 
tain, that we have boundless supplies of material, not only for 
paper-making, but for the finest as well as the coarsest textile 
fabrics, and for cordage which may rival Manilla Hemp, or the 
American Agave, which bridges over broad rivers. The oakum 
of these plants may be converted into paper; and that made 
from the Plantain is remarkable as well for fineness as for 
