10 



:graiii and flour, are Jute; seed bags of all sorts are jute; every bale 

 the eye can look upon is wrapped in jute; every bale in our docks 

 and warehouses is jute ; every bale in every ship at sea is jute. 

 Many scores of tons of jute-yarn, which covered the Atlantic 

 telegraph wire to America, taken out and reeled off by the Great 

 Easterii sfeam-shiji, now lie qaietly at work at the bottom of the 

 sea ; and thousand-; of tons of jute are doing a similar service to 

 mankind in every quarter over the terraqueous globe, constituting 

 the peaceful medium of intercourse among all nations. In the 

 ■time of the Crimean War millions of jute bags filled with earth or 

 sand were used for the construction of bastions or earthworks. 

 A large proportion of the paper used in the world is made from 

 jute ; hops from the sunny south of England are conveyed to 

 their destination in bags of jute ; screens for upholstery and for 

 protecting fruit and other trees are woven from jute." We learn 

 from the British Trade Journal, September, 1893, that the 

 imports of jute into the United Kingdom, in 18y2, amounted to 

 255,000 tons, the value of which was nearly £4,000,000, and, 

 independent of the quantity of material exported, 170,000 tons 

 were used principally for yarn and piece goods for the export 

 market. The value of jute as imported into England and Scot- 

 land is from £17 to £24 per ton. 



Another member of the Jute famih' is Sparmannia Africana 

 {vide Fig. No. 1), a well-known evergreen garden shrub from tlie 

 Cape, but the value of which as ;i fibre plant has yet to be proved 

 by experts. If the filjre be really worth anything, I can safely lay 

 claim to having been the first to discover the textile properties of the 

 plant ; and in forwarding a somewhat roughly -prepared specimen 

 to Philadelphia, I gave it the provisional name " African Hemp 

 bush." Professor Dodge's opinion of it, as expressed in his 

 general report on fibres, is rather favorable ; he says — " The 

 fibre is of a brilliant siivery-grey colour when it has been 

 properly prepared ; some of the filaments of the sample are 

 brilliant and lustrous, and it possesses considerable strength, in 

 fact seems almost equal to China grass (Eheea or Ramie) in 

 tenacity." This fibre could be produced in enormous quantities 

 in Victoria, as the shrub grows with extraordinary rapidity in any 

 loose fairly good soil, with or without irrigation, although a 

 liberal water supply during the warm season would improve the 

 growth of the plant, and render it capable of producing at least 

 two crops of " canes " or shoots in a year. The double-flowered 

 variety (imdoubtedly the best) is of dense habit, attains a height 

 of 10 or 12 feet, and can be readily propagated by cuttings, seeds, 

 or division of the roots ; whilst the mode of obtaining the bast 

 is by simply macerating the stems and branches for eight or ten 

 days, according to temperature and the age of the wood, and after- 

 wards heckling. 



