148 FIBRE. 



given in large quantities to milch cattle, it t&ints their milk, al- 

 though eaten in moderate quantities it improves it. On the whole, 

 cattle take more readily to sour than to sweet silage. 



Silage contains a smaller proportion of nutritive matter than 

 hay ; but, whereas hay can be made only with the finer grasses, the 

 coarsest materialsj that could not otherwise be utilised at all, can 

 be ensilaged and rendered tender and palatablcw 



Section V. — Littek. 



From an agricultural point of view, litter is the dry absorbent 

 vegetable material placed under cattle where they are stalled, with 

 the object not only of giving the animals a soft warm bed to lie 

 upon at night, but also and principally of collecting, for use in the 

 fields, their droppings and urine. In India, grass and straw are, 

 as a rule, so abundant that the leaves and stalks of other herbace- 

 ous plants are hardly ever used ; and, indeed, the practice of litter- 

 ing cattle obtains on only a very small scale, owing both to neglect 

 and to so large a proportion of the cattle being either sent out into 

 the forests to graze, or folded together, almost as close as they can 

 stand, in an open railed enclosure. 



Section VI. — Fibre. 



Amongst herbaceous species, the most generally utilised for the 

 fibre they yield are certain grasses, and a few species of Tiliacese 

 and Malvaceae. 



None of our grasses yield any really textile material, their fibres 

 being suitable only for making ropes, matting, and paper. The most 

 important, as well as by far the most valuable, of our grasses are the 

 bhdbar {Ischoemum angustifoliurn) andthemunj {Saccharum Sara). 



The former grass grows gregariously on dry bare slopes along 

 the foot of the Himalayas and in the hilly parts of Behar, Chota 

 Nagpur, "Western Bengal, and the northern districts of the Madras 

 Presidency. The late Mr. Routledge, the great paper manufac- 

 turer of Sunderland, declared that " It closely resembles esparto 

 but does not contain so much glutinous and amylaceous matters, 

 nor so much silica. ***** A small quantity of bleach brings it 

 up to a good colour. The ultimate fibre is very fine and delicate, 

 rather more so than esparto, and of about the same strength ; the 

 yield is, however, 42 per cent., somewhat less." Mr. Edwards, 

 of the Lucknow Paper Mills, found the yield to be only a little 

 more than 35 per cent., but the specimens he experimented with 

 had been badly collected, the top parts of the plants being more than 



