Fibres, 



202 



[March, 1910. 



to London, and that an acre should 

 yield two tons. If these figures are 

 correct, and there is no reason to doubt 

 them, the profit when prices range at 

 anything over £30 a ton for "Sisal" 

 fibre should be very considerable. 



Mention is also made of a sample of 

 Manila hemp (Musa textilis,) grown in 

 the Government Experimental Garden, 

 Kullar, on the Nilgiris, at an elevation 

 of 1,300 ft., and forwarded by the Agri- 

 Horticultural Society, Madras. It con- 

 sisted of a well-prepared fibre of pale buff 

 colour and fair lustre, and was not so 

 harsh as ordinary Manila hemp, but 

 rather resembled plantain or banana 

 fibre in general character. It was re- 

 ported to be inferior to ordinary Manila 

 hemp and to be more like plantain 

 fibre. The fibre, being rather soft, was 

 regarded as well adapted for the manu- 

 facture of binder twine, and was valued 

 at about £23 to £Zi per ton. A more 

 interesting investigation was that of a 

 sample of kapok — the seed-floss of Erio- 

 dendron anfrachwsum, a common tree 

 in Madras— which was collected by the 

 Tahsildar of Virddhachalam, in South 

 Arcot. The kapok is described as clean, 

 of an even, light brown colour, very 

 lustrous, resilient, soft and silky. The 

 brokers to whom it was submitted for 

 valuation considered it to be much 

 superior to ordinary Indian or Ceylon 

 varieties, and, iu fact, fully equal to 

 good Java kapok. Such material, they 

 stated, would be readily bought by 

 manufacturers, but an exact valuation 

 was difficult to give, they said, as 

 the same description of floss had not 

 been sold on the London market for 

 about two years. They were of opinion, 

 however, that it would be saleable at 

 about $.\d. per lb. in the condition of the 

 sample, which contained a quantity of 

 seeds and occasional fragments of the 

 capsules. If free from these impurities 

 they thought that the kapok would 

 probably fetch Qd, per lb. It is interest- 

 ing to note that samples of this material, 

 owing to its superior quality, have been 

 placed on exhibition in the Indian col- 

 lections of the Imperial Institute. 



INDIAN PAPER INDUSTRY. 



(From the Indian Trade Journal, Vol. 

 XV., No. 189, November 11, 1909.) 



Manyieasons have been assigned from 

 time to time to account for the practi- 

 cal failure of the paper industry in 

 this country. One of the latest is con- 

 tained in a Monograph on Paper Making 

 in the Bombay Presidency by Mr. R. T. 

 P. Kirk, I. C. S., who says :— 



" For various reasons paper mills in 

 this country, and especially in the Bom- 



bay Presidency, find it difficult to make 

 headway against the competition of 

 foreign goods imported from England, 

 America, Austria and Germany. In the 

 first place, materials of good and equal 

 quality or of any one particular quality 

 are not easily obtained. Here, the paper- 

 maker is forced to be a rag-dealer, with 

 his own collecting agents in the prin- 

 cipal towns. In Europe, rag-collecting 

 is a separate industry, and the rags 

 are carefully sorted by skilled labour 

 before they are delivered to the mill, 

 Numerous different qualities and kinds 

 are fixed by trade custom, and a supply 

 of any one of them is instantly avail- 

 able to order. In India, on the other 

 hand, the rags are sorted at the mills, 

 and are f'ouud to contain a greater 

 quantity of old, dirty, worn and useless 

 material. The Deccan Paper Mills cal- 

 culate that out of 100 tons of "dirty- 

 white" rags received from their agents 40 

 tons are sorted out as useless, leaving 60 

 tons as available. Of this, 12£ per 

 cent, is lost in dusting and chopping, 

 leaving 52 tons. Of this, 40 per cent, 

 is lost in bleaching and boiling, leaving 

 32 tons. That is, out of (50 tons of rags 

 only 32 are available after treatment, 

 showing an approximate loss of 50 per 

 cent. From the table given on page 19 of 

 Sindall's Paper Techuulot/y, the high- 

 est percentage of loss on rags during 

 the treatment is 36, which is the figure 

 for unbleached linen. In India the 

 rags are commonly of cotton, and 

 Sindall gives a percentage loss of about 

 20 for cottons. The loss as calculated 

 by the Deccan Mills is at least twice as 

 great. 



The supply of raes is entirely uncer- 

 tain, and there is often a corresponding 

 uncertainty in the quality of the paper, 

 due to the use of substitutes, or to 

 uneven porportions in the mixture of 

 materials. In order to supplement the 

 rags the mill uses a kind of grass 

 known as sabai or babai grass in Ben- 

 gal, where it grows in abundance. 



The company laments that coal is not 

 obtained so easily inPoona as in Ben- 

 gal. From 2 to 2| tons of coal are 

 required per ton of finished paper. The 

 prices quoted are Rs. 4-8 per ton in Ben- 

 gal, with Rs. 11 freight to Poona. If 

 obtained from Singareni in the Nizam's 

 territory, the cheapest is Rs. 8 per 

 ton, with Rs, 8 as freight. 



Paper-making is not a flourishing 

 industry in the Bombay Presidency. 

 Either no person with sufficient capital 

 or ability or,euterprise has yet come for- 

 ward to compete with foreign makers 

 on their own lines, or the difficulties 

 of situation and supply are too serious 

 to overcome." 



