DESCRIPTIVE CATALOGUE. 



265 



rate of 100 to 120 feet per minute. The drums of these stripping machines are 

 driven at the rate of 1,000 to 2,000 revolutions per minute, their diameter being from 

 14 to 20 inches. After passing through the strippers, the partially cleaned fiber is 

 hand washed in bundles of about 20 leaves; these bundles are suspended in water 

 and are allowed to soak for about two hours, the fiber is then spread out on the 

 bleaching ground for a time, which varies according to the weather, and then hung 

 on lines to dry. It is then either scutched or hackled, or both, packed in bales, and 

 pressed for shipment. When the stripper is in good order, and the fiber has been 

 fairly cleaned, the loss in scutching amounts to from 3 to 5 hundredweight per ton, 

 and in hackling from 2 to 3 hundredweight. In the warm-water dressing the same 

 operations are gone through with, with the exception that the fiber is washed and 

 placed to soak from six to twenty-four hours 

 in tanks filled with warm water, which is 

 kept heated by means of either fire or a 

 steam pipe. 



In a report to the State Department by 

 United States Consul Connolly the follow- 

 ing note occurs: 



"To imperfect machinery and careless- 

 ness in the selection of green plants may be 

 ascribed the apparent coarseness and the 

 inferiority so often complained of in the 

 flax exported from certain portions of New 

 Zealand. But with improved flax-dressing 

 machinery and proper care exercised in the 

 selection of the raw material, a very superior 

 article can be produced. The fiber of Phor- 

 mium tenax is susceptible of a much higher 

 degree of preparation than has been be- 

 stowed upon it up to the present. This, 

 however, is not altogether the fault of those 

 who are engaged in its manufacture; it is 

 for want of the necessary machinery. The 

 hand-dressed article prepared by the natives 

 is as fine as silk as compared with the mod- 

 ern machine-dressed flax of to-day. This 

 only demonstrates the fact that the fiber 

 may be reduced to a much finer quality, and 

 all that is necessary to uo this is an improved 

 machine. If New Zealanders can not pro- 

 duce the requisite machinery, I trust the 

 inventive genius of America will come to 

 the rescue. There is certainly a splendid 

 opportunity and a fortune for any man who 



will invent a machine that will successfully and economically reduce New Zealand, 

 flax to a proper degree of fineness." 



For further accounts see following authorities: Phormium tenax, a Fibrous Plant, 

 edited by Sir James Hector, New Zealand, 1889 ; The Leaf Fibers of the United States, 

 Report No. 5, Fib Inv Series, U. S. Dept. Ag., 1893; U. S. Consular Report, May, 

 1890; Spon's Enc, Div.III. 



* Specimens.— U S. Nat. Mus. ; Mus. U. S. Dept Ag. ; Field Col. Mus. 



Phragmites communis. Common Beed or Eeed- grass. 



One of the largest of our native grasses, growing to the height of 12 feet, the 

 rather stout culms bearing numerous broad, spreading, and sharply pointed leaves 

 1 to 2 feet long. It has deeply penetrating and extensively creeping rootstocks, 



Fig. 90.— Reed-grass, Phragmites communis. 



