446 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. • [November i, 1881. 
The strip, on being pulled over the pegs, will be 
divided by the first and sub-divided by the second row 
of pegs. The result will be very fine strips of fibre which 
can be dried, baled, and despatched as marketable stuff. 
The cordage or textile manufacturers will then easily be 
able to extract single individual fibres out of the stuff 
for their industries. 
I must explain that the pegs must not be of iron, as 
they would discolor the fibre ; they should be of bamboo, 
the second row being finer than the first, and both 
rows being close in together so as conjointly to pro- 
duce the effect of a fine comb. One single row does 
not answer so well as two rows. 
The whole operation, from the cutting of the 
trees to the combing of the clean strips, should be done 
in one day. No water should be used at all, and the 
product of each class of layers should of course be 
treated separately. 
The fibrous material, whether simply crushed and 
cleaned in strips for paper-making or also combed for 
cordage and textile manufactures, should be dried, not 
by being spread on the ground, but by being laid out 
in the sun, or in any airy place, on ropes, as the washer- 
men lay out their clothes. The material will be dry 
in a very short time, but it should on no account be 
exposed to wet or to the night dew, and should be 
perfectly dry before being baled. And it follows from 
this, that the extraction of the fibre from the plantain 
tree had better be done during the day than during the 
rainy season. 
In thoroughly conducting the trials on one, or two, 
or more species of the plants, the following particulars 
could no doubt be carefully noted: — 
the name and rank of experimenter, 
the species operated upon, 
the locality and district, 
the weight of the trees cut down, 
the weight of dry fibre obtained, 
the cost of the operation. 
Samples of each class of fibre would be preserved for 
valuation. The object would be the production of a 
marketable fibre from indigenous plantain trees by some 
cheap and ready process of extraction such as is here 
indicated, in view to serving — 
!1) paper-makers, and 
2) cordage and textile manufacturers. 
That these suggestions will produce good fibre 
I have no doubt, as I have tested them practically on 
the Native variety of plantain known in Bengal as the 
kanch-kclla, which does not produce such good or so 
much fibre as the varieties I have now referred to. 
The working charges will not, I believe, be pro- 
hibitive, for the implements I have suggested are anything 
but costly, and they can easily be carried about the 
plantations, thus obviating the necessity of otherwise 
carrying the plantain trees themselves which are heavy ' 
to transport. The cost of manual labour can be re- 
duced by making three men work two pairs of rollers 
and passing four strips at a time. This can be done 
by placing one man to turn one pair of rollers with 
each hand, and by having each of the two other men 
to pass a strip with each hand. 
Enclosure No. 2. 
Letter from H. W. J. Wood, Esq., Secretary to the 
Bengal Chamber of Commerce, to the Officiating Under- 
Secretary to the Government of India, Simla, dated 
Calcutta, 2nd June 1881. 
I am directed to acknowledge the receipt of your 
letter, No. 132, of the 21st of April, on the subject of 
fibre obtained from the plantain tree by the process 
described in the memorandum drawn up by Mr. Liotard 
of your department. 
2. As the Committee of the Chamber of Commerce 
have no practical knowledge of the matter, the samples 
of fibre, together with your letter and its enclosure, 
were referred to the Agri-Horticultural Society for report ; 
and the Committee of the Chamber place before you 
the opinions of those whose practical experience will 
no doubt be accepted by the Government as a guide 
in any future experiments that may be conducted with 
the view of making a valuable addition to the indus- 
trial resources of the country : — 
" I have submitted to our Committee your letter of 
the 19th instant, and the papers accompanying and the 
minute specimens of plantain fibre therein referred to. 
They are of opinion that they are very prettily got up, 
are much too good for paper making, but might be 
useful for cordage. It is, they add, impossible to quote 
values on such small specimens." 
" If Mr. Liotard can prepare a large quantity of fibre 
similar to the specimens at a moderate cost it should 
pay well, probably as a substitute for Manila hemp." 
Enclosure No. 3. 
Extract paragraph 1 from a letter from the North- 
Western Provinces and Oudh Government, No. 910, 
dated 9th June 1881, to the Secretary to the Govern- 
ment of India, Home, Bevenue and Agricultural De- 
partment. 
In reply to your letter, No. 6-125, dated 21st April 
1881, regarding the cultivation of Manila hemp in these 
provinces, I am directed to say that inquiries concern- 
ing this plant had previously been made by the Depart- 
ment of Agriculture and Commerce, North-Westem Pro- 
vinces and Oudh, from Captain W. T. H. Cox, a planter 
in the South Wynaad, who has for some time past 
been cultivating it on a large scale. His report is not 
satisfactory, since he has found it impossible as yet 
to grow the plant at a profit, from the difficulty of 
cleaning the hemp for which no machine appears to 
have been invented. If the cleaning is done by hand, 
as in' the Philippine Islands, the process is found to 
be too expensive to leave a margin of profit. 
From C. L. Tupper, Esq., Officiating Secretary to the 
Government of India, Bevenue and Agricrdtural Depart- 
ment (Agri and Horticultural), to the Secretary to the 
Government of Madras, dated Simla, 8th July 1881, 
No. 6. 
In continuation of the letter from this Department, 
No. 122, of the 21st April last, I am directed to for- 
ward copies of the papers noted in the margin, on the 
subject of the extraction of fibre from the Mum textilis. 
2. As it appears that Captain Cox has found diffi- 
culty in cleaning the hemp, I am to suggest that, with 
the permission of the Government of Madras, he should 
be furnished with a copy of the memorandum by Mr. 
Liotard. Should Captain Cox try the process therein 
described, the Government of India would be glad to be 
favored with some account of the results. 
VEGETABLE PHYSIOLOGY. 
(Gardeners' Chronicle, 10th September 1881.) 
At the close of the last century Sprengel published 
a most suggestive work on flowers, in which he pointed 
out the curious relation existing between these and in- 
sects, and showed that the latter carried the pollen 
from flower to flower. His observations, however, attracted 
little notice until Darwin called attention to the subject 
in 1862. It had long been known that the Cowslip 
and Primrose exist under two forms, about equally 
numerous, and differing from one another in the arrange- 
ments of their stamens and pistils, the one form having 
the stamens on the summit of the flower and the 
stigma half way down ; while in the other the relative 
positions are reversed, the stigma being at the summit 
of the tube and the stamens half way down. This 
