418 THE FIBRES OF TRINIDAD. 



on the leaves of the Palma Christi or castor-oil plant (Ricinus communis). 

 It gives a cloth of seemingly loose texture, but of incredible durability, 

 the life of one person, it is stated, being seldom sufficient to wear out a 

 garment made of it. 



It is also largely reared in a domestic state in Assam, there being hardly 

 a ryot who has not a small patch of the castor-oil plant near his house. 

 The thread is wove like cotton, and the clothes are mostly used for home 

 consumption by the poorer classes at all seasons, and by the highest for- 

 winter wear, a few being bartered with the Bhotias and other hill tribes. 

 Large quantities used formerly to be exported to Lassa. It is also cultivated 

 in Ceylon. 



44. Attacus insularis (Vollen Hoven). The Eria silkworm of Java. 



Habitat. Java. 



India Museum, Whitehall. 



THE FIBRES OF TRINIDAD. 



BY HERMAN CRUGER, COLONIAL BOTANIST. 



Only small quantities of cotton are cultivated, and none imported 

 beyond some parcels from Venezuela. Before the emancipation of the 

 slaves, the whole of our drier soils, that is the Islands of the Dragon's 

 Mouth, and part of the East Coast, were devoted to cotton. Immediately 

 after emancipation, labour became so expensive and unreliable, that cotton 

 ceased to pay. At present prices of labour, cotton would give a return, 

 but capital has been diverted into other channels, and our available means 

 are devoted to existing plantations of sugar and cocoa. The abandoned 

 cotton fields in the Bocas Islands have grown up in bush, but so favourable 

 is the soil for cotton there, that the plant even now is found all over the 

 former cultivated lands, bearing abundantly. Samples 94 and 95, shown 

 in the International Exhibition, are of this wild cotton. 



Just now, the question of West Indian cotton is one worthy of atten- 

 tion. Capital and labour could with ease and profit revive the cultivation. 

 The land is very abundant and good, the climate is most favourable, and the 

 distance front Europe, short. 



97. Down of Ochroma Lagopus, Sw., Sterculiaceae, Corkwood Cotton, 

 The fibre of this cotton is very smooth and elastic, and has been found 

 useful for upholstery purposes. 



98. Fibre of the base of leafstalk of Oenocarpus Bacaba, Mart., the 

 Palma real. 



When a palm leaf becomes useless to the parent tree it drops off in 

 various manners, according to the variety of the tree. One mode, as in this 

 case, is that the leaf stalk breaks off at some ten to fifteen inches above its 

 base, and that the cellular tissue of the base of the leaf stalk itself 



