THE JHAWAIIAN 
mtSm & AGRICULTURIST 
Vol. VIII. FEBRUARY, 1911. No. 2. 
BANANA CLOTH. 
In view of the anticipated expansion of Hawaii's banana in- 
dustry, it will be interesting to know that cloth made from banana 
fiber is attracting attention abroad. An exhibit of this product 
made at Chunking Fair was the subject of a report by Mr. J. L. 
Smith, British consul at that place. The Tropical Agriculturist 
quotes an Allabahad paper as saying, relative to the same exhibit : 
"There is not a village in India that has not its clump of banana 
trees and not a village in which the fruit is not gathered and the 
fiber in the stock wasted. It has been left to the Chinese to teach 
us how the tons of banana fiber thrown on the rubbish heap every 
year can be converted into banana cloth and sold at a most re- 
munerative price." Consul Smith describes the process of banana 
fiber manufacture, part of which is similar to that of extracting 
the fiber of ramie. He says that only a few pieces of the cloth 
have been made experimentally, for which reason the price is 
high, being about $5.75 the roll of five yards, one yard wide. It 
is claimed that the cloth is extremely durable. Nowadays the 
byproducts of many natural growths and manufactures greatly 
enhance the profits of many primal industries, so that this Chinese 
invention of banana fabric may add materially to the importance 
of banana cultivation everywhere. 
HAWAIIAN SCIENCE VALUED ABROAD. 
Tropical Life (London) for November, 1910, contains a review 
by A. Gordon Howitt, B. Sc., of "A Study of the Composition 
of the Rice Plant," by W. P. Kelley and Alice R. Thompson, 
being the twenty-first Bulletin issued by the Hawaii Agricultural 
Experiment Station. According to the reviewer this treatise on 
rice "marks a decided step forward in the investigations on the 
manurial requirements of the rice crop. During the forward 
march in the study of economic crops," he continues, "the culti- 
vation of rice seems to have been neglected ; and so these careful 
results with useful deductions attached are all the more welcome." 
Mr. Howitt makes an abstract of a portion of the Bulletin and 
concludes in these appreciative words : "In a summary at the end 
