STRUCTURAL CLASSIFICATION. > 23 



the need of various utensils in the domestic economy, and pottery, 

 trays, and baskets were fashioned from clay, from twigs of bushes or 

 trees, from rushes and the leaves of palms and similar plants. And 

 when caves or overhanging cliffs and rock shelters ceased to be his 

 protection from the elemeuts he learned to build huts and to thatch 

 them with palms and grasses. Haviug now entered upon a domiciliary 

 existence and new wants being created, mats and screens were woven 

 from reeds and sedges or from strips of palm, and primitive man had 

 entered upon a kind of barbaric civilization. 



Aboriginal man is primitive in all ages, and the age of his particular 

 race and his environment fixes the scale of his civilization. If, in the 

 early Stone Age, he threw across his shoulders or girded about his 

 loins the skin of an animal slaughtered for food, it was because such 

 rude dress satisfied his simple wants in this direction. And there are 

 native tribes in Africa and Australia at the present time with no 

 higher desires as to their raiment and who still dress in skins, and 

 African tribes who still adhere to Adam's costume — not fig leaves, but 

 a girdle of evergreens and creepers or a leafy branch, as in the Obbo 

 tribe. 



But the economic uses of plants were bound to be learned by savage 

 man in time, and skill was early acquired in preparing them for use. 

 We find, therefore, among the uncivilized races all over the world that 

 many species of fiber plants have become most useful for utensils, 

 cords, and clothing which civilized man with all his intelligence and 

 inventive genius can not afford to employ commercially. It is true 

 that the recognized commercial fibers represent those best adapted for 

 use, and that many of them, like flax, hemp, and cotton, must be 

 classed with the fibers of antiquity. They have established their 

 places because they have been proved to be the best for the purposes 

 for which they are employed, and the others can only be considered as 

 their substitutes or as simple " native" fibers. We have therefore two 

 natural groups of fibers — the commercial species with their substi- 

 tutes, which are soon enumerated, and the vast group of the so-called 

 native fibers, many of which might fitly be termed emergency fibers, 

 because they are extracted and used at the moment when needed. 

 These so-called native fibers are all interesting, however, and through 

 our knowledge of some of them, or when a species finds its way to the 

 outside world, a new commercial fiber now and then is brought to 

 light. They are legion when taken collectively, and therefore in 

 enumerating the many species found in the countries of the globe it is 

 very easy to secure a list that can only be stated in four figures. 



STRUCTURAL CLASSIFICATION. 



We have seen that different forms of cellular structure compose the 

 fibers derived from dicotyledonous and monocotyledonous plants, as 



