352 



DICKSON ON COLONEL ABBOTT'S REPORT 



native habits. Both of these gentlemen have, during the last 

 few months, been considering the subject of the planting of 

 rheea. They considered that, to get a considerable supply at 

 an early period, it is indispensably necessary that the energy 

 of Europeans should be directed to its planting and prepara- 

 tion, and that, with due activity, the desired results may easily 

 be obtained, in the second year of the operations in whatever 

 quantities it may (within reason) be wanted. 



' ' The natives are so unacquainted with this plant as an 

 article of culture, or of any large or new use to be made of it, 

 that it would be almost a work of years to persuade them by 

 slow degrees to take it up of themselves ; while if they saw the 

 work done under European direction, they would soon be 

 induced to imitate it, if it was found profitable to continue its 

 culture. 



<c The rheea already grows wild in all parts of the Sunder- 

 bunds, though not in large quantities ; it is on the property of 

 the Messrs. Morrell, who some years since tried the experiment 

 of collecting and preparing it for sale. 



" They soon, however, abandoned it, because they had no 

 machinery of any kind suited to prepare it; and had to resort 

 to the services of all the old women in the district, who 

 did the best they could to peel off the bark with old knives, 

 and this rude process was found in the result to be 

 expensive and unproductive of good results; but as Mr. J. 

 Hill Dickson, the first inventor of machinery to prepare 

 rheea for spinning purposes, has also discovered a liquid 

 process by which the rheea can be made as fine as silk, for 

 which he has obtained patents for India, the Continent, 

 Great Britain and Ireland, and forty varieties of goods have 

 been made from it in Bradford, equal to alpaca cloth, there is 

 every certainty of the rheea fibre becoming, like the jute, an 

 article of most extensive importation. Mr. Dickson has been 

 equally successful by his patented inventions in preparing the 



