HISTORY OF FLAX-CULTURE. 



273 



the object, makes the article of more interest than if it were 

 easily prepared. I had, from the Society of Arts in London, 

 one half hundred-weight, which I managed to break, scutch, 

 and prepare by my patent machines and patent liquid 

 process. I produced the fibre fit for spinning, all the gum or 

 resin having been thoroughly removed. A description of the 

 country and climate where the fibre is produced at about £12 

 per ton, will doubtless be interesting to the reader. On the 

 18th of February, 1859, I prepared some New Zealand Flax 

 by machinery alone, and made it worth £80 per ton, from 

 green straw; £15 per ton first cost, and even that price 

 cannot be got for it in London, as imported ; but as the New 

 Zealand government has very wisely adopted the only method 

 to have the Flax introduced into the English market, by 

 offering a reward of £4,000 to such inventors as may discover 

 and produce machinery and a process of preparing it for 

 market, I have no doubt, from my own experiments, that 

 a great trade must in a short time be created in the article of 

 Phormium Tenax, and consequently I think the following 

 deserves insertion. 



NEW ZEALAND. 



The following extracts are taken from Mr. C. Hursthouse's 

 New Zealand, published by Stanford, Charing Cross : — 



THE CLIMATE. 



"The climate of New Zealand has suffered from indis- 

 criminate laudation. Feminine superlatives, such as ' nicest,' 

 'finest/ ' loveliest,' 6 sweetest,' have been so lavished on it as 

 to have obscured its true character, and its real unquestionable 

 merits. In the sense in which we use such terms as fine, 

 serene climate, there are many climates equal to that of New 

 Zealand. Nay, if we limit the comparison to any one special 

 month or season, we may perhans find climates which, 

 S 



