422 THE FIBRES OF TRINIDAD. 



Plantain and Banana, would form excellent food for cattle. The return, 

 although 1 have no positive data, must at least be equal to Plantain ; and 

 the advantage of this plant is, that it does not require good soil and careful 

 cultivation. The same may be said with regard to 



115. From a very robust sort of Banana, the large red sort. 



Some authors pretend that the varieties of M. sapientum give no fibre 

 or so little of it, that they are not worth cultivating. I am, on the con- 

 trary, of opinion, that for a combination of a stock and fibre farm, these 

 varieties alone would answer. A small per centage less in fibre would be 

 more than balanced by the superior power of vegetation possessed by these 

 plants. 



116. Miisa paradisiaca, L. The common Plantain. This is, nest to the 

 plant giving the Manila hemp, the most celebrated of the family, and 

 deservedly, as it will give a large return where the soil permits its perma- 

 nent cultivation. But soils where this plant subsists for a long time 

 are rare. 



The extraordinary accounts which have, from time to time, been pub- 

 lished with regard to what a plantain-walk ought to yield, have failed to 

 attract capital to this branch of agriculture. These calculations were not 

 always extravagant ; some have been sober enough, and yet they showed 

 considerable returns. Several tons of plantain flour, besides one and a half 

 tons of fibre, can be obtained per acre, and the outlay for tillage and 

 machinery is small. Still the plantain is not the most frequently cultivated 

 of our fibrous plants, and it may be well questioned whether these bananas, 

 which produce no fruit, should not be preferred ; the stems keeping much 

 longer alive, and perfecting the fibre gradually throughout. The last 

 number of fibre produced by a monocotyledonous plant, the Moriche, has 

 already been mentioned. Taking a general survey of the fibre substances 

 famished by this great class, it is found that its produce is coarse, and 

 adapted rather for cords and ropes than for the finer tissues. It is true, that 

 superior tissues have been produced, but it was done at an unremunerative 

 outlay for labour. The rank and rapid vegetation of a tropical zone alone 

 can produce these enormous quantities of fibre, which the monocotyledons 

 give in a short space of time, but a certain coarseness appears to be in- 

 separable from this luxuriant vegetation. Fortunately, the demand for 

 coarser tissues, ropes, &c, is very considerable, and these coarse substances 

 may, moreover, be manufactured into paper. 



We turn to Dicotyledons, the second great class of flowering plants, and 

 these also we group into families. While the fibres of the class just now 

 discussed, are found in bundles, more or less defined in the stem or the 

 leaf-stalk, the fibres of the Dicotyledons are always in the bark and in 

 layers round the stem ; the consequence is, that these fibres are always 

 separable with greater or lesser ease, in at least one direction, often in two, 

 and that they may be subdivided into fibres of nearly any degree of fine- 

 ness. The fibres of flax and of the nettle tribe are the extremes in one 

 direction, whereas common bass for matting constitutes the other extreme. 



