WA 
v. 
d 
279 
This panes would not be Ls gies The stems grow best 
during the rainy on, and when once ripe they must be cut at once. 
Besides, it is evident that the sooner one crop is removed the better 
will be the prospects of the next. During the dry season the stems 
A and i 
internodes, are very woody, and offer relatively greater resistance to 
the process of No cMior. 
OTHER PROCESSES AND MACHINES. 
Of processes and machines not already mertioned, it is desirable to 
refer to one or two for the information of persons who m may not other- 
i rear 2 
wW then operated upon by other processes and 
eventually it was deprived of gum and mucilage and worked into a toler- 
able fair fibre suitable for manipulation by textile manufacturers. This 
fibre was reported by Messrs. Ide and Christie as “long, fairly cleaned 
mie fibre worth about 28/. perton." ‘The particulars iof Mr. Maries's 
methods ies not been made public; but we understand that a well- 
known firm of merchants in Calcutta has acquired the patent connected 
witk Then, and the system is now in course of being practically tested. 
on a large scale. 
In the hes of the Times there recently appeared an account of 
a machine invented by Mr. John Orr Wallace, and placed on view at 
the Irish Exhibition. This was artes a “patent scutching machine 
* for cleaning ramie, flax, hemp, &e.” The apparatus is about 6 ft. 
aich t 
came which deliver the stems downwards between five pairs of 
e tw ap . 
downwards by rollers which have an intermittent motion, and at each 
momentary pause, the pricking pins enter the material and are _— 
withdrawn from it. By degrees this fibrous- ME curtain 
over which table the woody su ce has previously passed to a receiver 
ina 
crushed X semi- pedo pened on, int perfectly free from fibre. 
is machine, it may be mentioned, was not constructed for the special 
i clea ie i 
of 1 ewt. per ho 
The machine can be driven bra two-horse power engine, and it requires 
two persons to feed and tend it 
Small quantities of Ramie stems grown at Kew have been s 
publie test similar to that adopted at the Paris trials. | For this pep 
