148 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [September 2, 1889 
" The pita aloes afford the negroes, who derive 
great benefit from them, the material of all the ropes 
useful for colonial dwellings, where they supply the 
place of ropes of hemp and flax. This fibre 
serves to make all that is necessary for harnessing 
animals of draught and of burden The threads 
of the pita aloe are employed in Manila to make 
pretty thick stuffs, which are tinted blue, and with 
which the natives clothe themselves. Once I bought 
two hundred pieces at the Isle of France, which I 
distributed to the negresses on my settlement : they 
made petticoats of them. These stuffs have served 
me also in making sieves. I am not aware if, at St. 
Domingo and even at Manila, they soak the leaves 
of the aloes to separate the threads. This operation 
does not appear necessary when they are employed 
to make cordage ; but when it is wished to manu- 
facture oloths, the soaking would render the threads 
more supple and more durable. It is probably to 
the want of this operatiou that the fibre owes the 
stiffness which it always possesses. Then the juice 
of the leaves could be expressed by causing them to 
pass between the cylinders of a sugar-mill ; then 
they might be put to soak for some days in stagnant 
water, which, aided by fermentation, would dissolve 
the gum which they contain ; after which they 
would be washed in the river. I do not know 
whether the juice expressed from the leaves, put 
over the fire to evaporate, would not yield a gum 
fitted for some purpose. This could be easily proved. 
I commend these trials to the patriotism of the 
Colonists. 
" In the Isles of France and Bourbon we pay no 
attention to our pita aloes, which spring up very 
freely in all sorts of soils, without any care whatever : 
scarcely is any use made of the leaves of the pine- 
apples, which possess great durability and which are 
preferred by the Chinese, especially for fishing. Be- 
side the pita aloe, which we ought to multiply for 
its fibres, we ought also to cultivate the aloe of 
Socotra, in order to obtain the gum-resinous extract 
which it furnishes, 'and of which there is a great 
consumption in India and Europe. The Dutch 
colonists possess this industry at the Cape of Good 
Hope. It seems to me that they could also extract 
fibre from it. This plant would then yield two most 
useful products."- (Vol. I., Obs. XXIV. : p. 155 and 
following.) 
And further on: — "Beside the hemp and the flax, 
we have in our Eastern colonies many plants which 
furnish fibre. I will first of all mention the two 
species of aloes which they have in the Isles of 
France and Bourbon, and which grow in the driest 
and most arid places. It seems to me that these 
plants are those which promise the greatest advan- 
tages," &c— (Chap. XVIII, Vol. II., p. 407.) 
Starting with this principle that it is necessary to 
bruise the leaves to cause them to rot easily, use was, 
as I have told you above, made at first of the 
cane-mills, but it was not long before it was seen that 
the cylinders cut the filaments, and the system was 
abandoned. It was the same with the soaking 
because of the lack of water. Later on mechanical 
beaters were made use of, imitating the human hand. 
The courtyard of my friend Bourguignon is still 
encumbered with these crude experiments, which 
witness to the variety, and at the same time to the 
sterility, of the first experiences. At last came the 
tamper, whose pa'.t-rnity has been claimed by many 
inventors, and which it is impossible to attribute 
to anyone. This is not Minerva sprung fully 
armed from the head of Jupiter : it was been born 
from the laborious mid common action of all the 
manufacturers of fibres, who have all and turn about 
more or less modified and perfected it. The principle 
of it came to us from America, 
III, The present mode of extraction consists & 
pulley, or, to speak more vulgarly, a wheel, about as 
large as an ordinary cart-wheel. This wheel is armed, 
over all its circumference, with spikes, or, if you pre- 
fer it, with scratchers, embedded in the wood and 
strongly fixed by means of bolts. There are of them 
about 14 or 15 on the whole circumference. If the 
wheel is 5 feet in diameter, and there are 15 scratchers 
thus disposed, it follows that they will be afoot apart 
from each other. This pulley, which is the soul of 
the machine, rests on trestles well bolted into their 
foundations : it is set agoing, like all machines of 
this sort, by some motive power and by means of a 
transmitting shaft like that for turbines. Imagine 
now, in the front of thi3 pulley, which makes 400 
or 500 revolutions a minute, imagine a table, like 
that which is found in front of the cane-mills, only 
narrower, and at this table a block of wood against 
which the scratchers of the pulley beat. This 
block of wood is the servant-maid. It is regu- 
lated by means of a screw placed behind, and plays 
a very important role in the progress of the machine, 
for according as it is too tight or too loose, the fibres 
are cut or are not sufficiently scraped. There must 
be between this servante and the scratchers a Bpace 
extremely exact, seeing that all depends on how the 
servant is regulated. I will not occupy my time in 
speaking to you of the little fluted cylinders placed in 
front of the machine, for they are only an accessory, 
intelligent it is true, and even necessary : but they 
are not indispensable to my lecture and would only 
encumber it. 
You have now before you what in the language of 
a maker of fibres we have agreed to call the 
" seratcher " : put six or ten of them into the same 
building, and those amongst you who have not had 
occasion to see these machines at work will be able 
to get a general idea of them. Gentlemen, this 
seratcher is not perfect, but it is very near being so : 
and when it is seen at work it is remarked with 
astonishment what small force it exerts and how 
little it breaks the fibre. The workman who serves 
it stands in front: he pushes the leaves one by one, 
rapidly, point first. (Keep this detail well in mind.) 
The leaf, dragged by the rotation of the fluted 
cylinders, which are under the hand of the workman, 
and which, in the new machines of which I shall 
have to say something to you later on, they have 
altogether omitted, is scraped over its greatest 
length, and effects its return by the same road in the 
state of fibre with the exception of an end which 
varies from G inches to a foot in length, and which 
it is the custom to call the " heel." This is the 
thick end, that which is attached to the stem, and 
the stumbling-block in all the experiments made up 
till now. What ought to be done with this heel ? 
Ought it to be cut off, as some have recommended, 
or ought it to be scraped? But this second operation 
cannot be done in the same machine. Well then, 
which is the course that ought to be adopted ? 
We will now, gentlemen, pass on to a new machine : 
the " head-splitter," the cause of all our misfortunes, 
which it is sought to suppress, and against which all 
our efforts have failed to the present day. It is 
essentially composed of a wheel identically similar 
to that of the seratcher, armed with scrapers like 
it, with the chief difference that instead of turning 
against a fixed servante it turns in a movable socket 
about 18 inches long, and forming a lever, or if you 
prefer it, a pedal. I have said that after having 
passed through the seratcher the aloe leaf, reduced 
to fibre throughout its greatest length, preserves a 
" heel." The workman charged with the second 
operation hangs up the soraped portion of the leaves 
in bundles of five or six at a time on a hook which 
juts out above the socket, half-open at his feet: 
then, placing his foot on the pedal, he imparts to it 
a movement from below upwards, while he causes 
