THE FIBER PRODUCTS OF THE FARM 159 
and may have taken a hint. At any rate, the earliest of 
human textile products appear to have been hammocks and 
baskets and coarse bags. 
Where did man find his first textile fibers? Doubtless, 
where the oriole found his. He saw the threads of bast flying 
in the wind from the stem of the tattered roadside reed. He 
plucked them and tested them and looked for more. He 
found such fibers were most easily separable from the stems 
that had lain rotting in the pool. So he took the hint, and 
threw other stems into the water to rot and yield their fiber. 
So he continues to do, even to this day. He immerses his 
flax stems to dissolve the plant gums that hold the fiber and 
the wood together; and after a week or two of soaking and 
softening, he removes them from the water, “breaks” them, 
“scutches” them to remove the broken bits of woody stem, 
“hackles” them to separate (by a combing process) the 
“tow” from the long, clean fiber, which is then available 
for spinning into linen thread and for weaving into cloth. 
By similar treatment, bast fiber is obtained from hemp 
and jute and other plants having annual stems. Wild 
“Indian hemp” or dogbane (Apocynum cannabinum) fur- 
nished bast fiber to the aborigines in the northeastern United 
States before the coming of the white man. Other wild 
plants having good bast fibers are swamp milkweed (Asclepias 
incarnata), marshmallow (Hibiscus moscheutos), stamp- 
weed (Abutilon avicenne), nettle (Urtica gracilis), burdock 
(Arctium lappa), sunflower (Helianthus annuus), etc. Many 
other plants produce good bast fibers, which vary much in 
length, strength, ease of separation and adaptability to 
manufacture. We have learned how to handle profitably a 
very few products among the many that nature offers. 
This is even more true of the cottons, which grow as single- 
celled fibers upon the surfaces of seeds. One species only 
we have learned to spin, tho we know many others, such as 
