Fibres. 



520 



[June, 1909. 



natural successor to the position occupied 

 by the Spruce and Pine trees during 

 the last thirty years ; while its power of 

 self-reproduction makes it impossible 

 that the process of exhaustion of supply, 

 which has taken place in the case of 

 these timbers, can ever happen with 

 bamboo. 



Its use in modern papermaking is by 

 no means a new idea. Thirty-five years 

 ago, an English papermaker (the late 

 Thos. Routledge) proved its suitability, 

 and but for the advent of woodpulp, it 

 would probably have been adopted then 

 as a leading staple. The nearness of 

 the Scandinavian forests and the 

 apparently inexhaustible supply of both 

 Avood and water-power, drove it into a 

 background from which it may now 

 emerge by reason of that same inhausti- 

 bility having proved only apparent. 

 This period of seclusion has not been 

 without its compensations. Thirty-five 

 years ago, the acid process which has 

 been so important a factor in the 

 development of woodpulp, was only 

 simmering in the brains of its inventors, 

 and there was room for doubt as to 

 whether the alkaline method, then in 

 vogue, would prove cheap enough 

 for bamboo. Woodpulp had to pass 

 through a long period of experimental 

 struggle before its manufacturing pro- 

 cesses reached anything like economic 

 perfection. No such time of difficulty 

 and doubt need be anticipated for 

 bamboo. Wood has done the pioneering 

 for it ; the acid process stands un- 

 challenged for good results and economy, 

 and its application to bamboo presents 

 no more difficulty than its transfer from 

 spruce to pine. It is in fact an easier 

 material to treat than either of these, 

 for its porosity, due to its system of 

 capillary sap tubes, assists the entrance 

 of the liquour employed to break down 

 the ligneous tissue, in a manner not 

 possessed by any of the woods hitherto 

 employed. 



Besides its porous character, bamboo 

 presents other features in wbich it has 

 distinct advantages over wood. The 

 preliminary preparation of the latter is 

 an expensive and unsatisfactory process. 

 The bark has to be carefully removed, 

 All the hard deeply sunk resinous knots, 

 so common a feature in coniferaj, have 

 t<-> be carefully bored out, and all old 

 scars and wounds with their accretions 

 of resin and dead tissue must be care- 

 fully excised. In spite of the greatest 

 care, some of these defects are bound to 

 escape attention, to afterwards appear 

 in . the finished product as disfiguring 

 chips of undigested and unbleachable 

 material. Bamboo has neither bark nor 

 resinous knots, and the only part requir- 

 ing elimination is the nodes, which are 



so clearly defined as to present no diffi- 

 culty. The reason for separating them 

 is that, being harder and denser than 

 the internodes, they require severe 

 chemical treatment, and are therefore 

 best dealt with separately. 



Tfie percentage of pure fibre (cellulose) 

 contained in any raw material is of 

 course of great importance in estimating 

 its value. Few of the possible sources 

 of paper-niaking fibre contain more than 

 half their raw dry weight, many contain 

 only a third or less. In this respect, 

 bamboo occupies a very satisfactory 

 position. My own long series of labor- 

 atory analyses, approximate very closely 

 to an average of 51 % of cellulose for the 

 internodes, and 45 % for the nodes, and 

 in actual practice on a commercial scale 

 I have found an all round yield of 45% to 

 be quite reliable. 



With all fibre-yielding plants, there is 

 a distinct stage of growth at which the 

 fibre is at its best both in quantity and 

 quality. In the case of the annual 

 grasses and bast fibre plants, this stage 

 is just previous to, or during flowering, 

 and before the formation of seed, after 

 which rapid lignification sets in involv- 

 ing deterioration of the fibre. Bamboo, 

 however, from its peculiar habit of 

 flowering only at periods of thirty to 

 fifty years, does not permit of this simple 

 indication being utilised, since except at 

 these rare periods, all the stems we see 

 mature, wither and die without flower- 

 ing. It is therefore important to fix the 

 age at which it will give the best results. 

 In order to determine this, I have carried 

 out a series of observations and experi- 

 ments extending over nine years. The 

 net result of these goes to show that 

 bamboo is at its best for fibre soon after 

 coining through its second monsoon (the 

 monsoon in wnich the young stem first 

 appeared being reckoned as the first), 

 when it is from sixteen to twenty-two 

 months old ; ac this age it has fully 

 developed its branches and thrown off 

 the hard, hairy, siliceous sheaths which 

 protect the early development of these ; 

 and it has commenced with its own root 

 system a lite independent of the parent 

 stem. It is at the age in which it is 

 passing out of a sappy, riotous, over- 

 grown youth, into a staid hardened 

 middle age, Previous to this, sap, gums 

 and waxes are in excess, and^the fibre 

 still immature in strength and toughness. 

 If permitted to pass through a third 

 monsoon, there comes an increase in the 

 deposition of silica within the tissues, 

 with a corresponding decrease in the 

 percentage of fibre and a greater diffi- 

 culty in isolating it, owing to the harden- 

 ing of the ligneous tissue iu which it is 

 embedded. 



