FIBRES. 135 



be cultivated in most of our tropical possessions. Re- 

 garding tlie question of the decortication of the stems, this 

 problem remains still unsolved. And on this, as the Kew 

 Bulletin says, "really hangs the whole subject. The third 

 stage [that of spiiining] is disappointing and unsatisfactory 

 because the second stage [that of decortication] is still un- 

 certain ; and being thus uncertain, the fibre is necessarily 

 produced in small and irregular quantities, and only comes 

 into the market by fits and starts. It would appear that 

 Ramie fibre difiers so essentially from cotton and flax that 

 it can only be manipulated and worked into fabrics by 

 means of machinery specially constructed to deal with it. 

 Owing to the comparatively limited supply of Ilamie fibre 

 hitherto in the market, no large firm of manufacturers have 

 thought it worth while to alter the present or put up new 

 machinery to work up Ramie fibre. If appliances or pro- 

 cesses for decorticating Ramie in the colonies were already 

 devised, and the fibre came into the market regularly and 

 in large quantities — say, hundreds of tons at a time — there 

 is no doubt manufacturers would be fully prepared to deal 

 with it. At present the industry is practically blocked 

 by the absence of any really successful means of separating 

 the fibre from the stems, and preparing it cheaply and 

 effectively. This, after all, is the identical problem which 

 has baffled solution for the last fifty years." 



Further trials in cleaning Ramie fibre by machinery 

 were made in Paris during the Exhibition of 1889, the 

 results of which have been recorded in the November and 

 December numbers of the Kew Bulletin for that year. It 

 will suifice for our purpose to know that the conclu- 

 sions arrived at were that France appeared to be the best 

 market for the fibre. A well-known London firm of fibre 

 brokers, reporting on the trade in November, 1889, say 

 that strips of the bark — known as ribbons — were sold during 

 that week at from £14 to £16 per ton, and that they were 



