MISCELLANEOUS FIBRES. 



By 0. F. Cross * 



In presenting my report upon the " Miscellaneous" fibrous raw materials in the Exhibition, I 

 shall keep as far as possible within the limits prescribed by its more immediate scope and purpose, 

 which I take to be the promotion of industry and commerce. At the same time in deference to the 

 universal experience that the extension and improvement of our commercial industries is ever making 

 greater and greater demands upon the resources of investigators and that empiricism as a guide to 

 development must give w ay, more and more to the methods of science, I shall endeavour to keep in 

 view so much of the first principles of the subject as is necessary to the formation of the scientific 

 judgment in regard to our raw materials, and to show that in this judgment is contained the solution 

 of the more practical questions of their commercial application. 



It is the more necessary to do this, since this department of industry has been perhaps exception- 

 ally fruitful of baseless enterprise of abortive attempts to make into commercial undertakings that 

 which careful antecedent investigation would have consigned to the long list of the unprofitable. Fur- 

 ther, these Exhibitions serve as land marks of progress in industrial science, and their literary records, 

 written to the furtherance of this important end, are of especial value to technical and scientific men. 

 As a precedent for the scientific treatment of our subject, I may cite Dr. Hugo Muller's report to the 

 Vienna Exhibition (1873) upon the subject of Vegetable Fibres, a report which has contributed in no 

 small degree to the spread of sound views concerning their chemical nature, treatment and applications, 

 and would have done more, but for the circumstances of its publication, which render it somewhat in- 

 accessible to the English reader. This is only one of a large number of treatises which have been 

 written during the last twenty-five years, most of which aim at industrial developments, at the same 

 time basiog their treatment of the subject upon scientific considerations, more or less. It is neverthe- 

 less true that these efforts have not borne much fruit in extending our commerce in fibres, and that 

 the number of fibres which we may regard as constituting the staple of our textile industries remains 

 very much within the familiar limited range. There arises consequently the very pertinent enquiry : 

 Is there any necessity in the nature of things for an extended application of the multitudinous Vege- 

 table Fibres ? Are not those fibres, now in possession, sufficient not only in supply but in kind, i.e., 

 in variety, for all the possible purposes of vegetable textiles ? Supposing the supply insufficient, are 

 we not rather to seek the remedy in improved methods of producing and treating our present raw 

 materials, than in introducing new ones ? Especially since a new fibre means new methods and ma- 

 chinery for the agriculturists and spinners. 



It is to questions of this kind that science can give direct answers, and I think it necessary to give 

 some indications of the method pursued by the investigator in answer to such enquiries. It is not my 

 intention to deal critically with the methods of the several investigators in this field, beyond pointing 

 out that while sound in themselves, they are for the most part either chemical or microscopic, and 

 their results therefore require complementary interpretation. For the rest my criticism will be limited 

 to the selection of the best from amongst these methods. The purpose in view being to widen the 

 common ground between scientific and practical meu in a great department of industry, I may, in 

 elucidating the common method of investigation, ask for the indulgence of either if I have to traverse 

 familiar ground. If at the same time new points of attack should be revealed to those who are busy 

 in wresting Nature's secrets, the writer will have the additional satisfaction of helping as a fellow 

 pioneer. 



It is well known that the Vegetable Fibres group themselves industrially, according to their appli- 

 cations, and it is also well known and interesting to note, that the grouping follows very much the 

 classifications which we call physiological. Thus cotton as a seed hair is distinct, consisting as it does 

 of independent ultimate cells : the Miscellaneous Fibres, on the other hand, with which we have to do 

 — a class which includes all other fibrous raw materials — are, in contradistinction, fibre-aggregates. 

 The conditions of this aggregation are various. The ultimate fibre being a hollow tube with more 

 or iess thickened walls, and of comparatively short length inch-2 inches), these aie built up to- 

 gether into a compound fibre : (1) by apposition merely ; (2) by a stronger adhesion determined by a 

 species of fusion of contiguous cell walls ; (3) sometimes by, what may in such case be properly termed, 

 incrustation, i.e. a cementing together through the intervention of a third substance. This encrusting 

 substance may be cellular, in that case the whole aggregate is or was an integral part of the living ske- 

 leton of the plant ; or the incrustation may be due to amorphous substances, such as gums, which are 

 rather products of degradation, or excreta, than concerned in the general functions of the plant. 

 (4) In certain cases, by reason of the preponderance of fibre or elongated cells, the whole of a plant 

 comes to be regarded as a fibrous raw material, and is treated in the arts as such, e.g., Esparto, and the 

 straw of cereals. In these the fibre aggregation, being organic, is usually of such a character as to 

 require a chemical process of disaggregation to bring it into evidence. Raw materials of this kind 

 are used either for paper making, or for the very coarsest textiles, e.g. mats. 



Though the union of the fibre into bundles or complexes is resolved to a greater or less extent by 

 the processes of separation and preparation for spinning, the spinning processes adopted require a 



* Reprinted from the Colonial and Indian Exhibition Reports. 



