644 
Supptement to the Tropital Agriculturist." [MarCK 1, 1900 
in the case of the pariah dog? who^e home is 
on the street-^. Tlie muzzling should be slackened 
when the epidemic passes away, for a watch or 
hunting dog, and in fact any dog is no dog with a 
muzzle o!i. 
Yours ti'uly, 
A. CHINNIAH, 
Veterinary Surgeon. 
Mango Lodge, Colombo, December 22nd, 1899. 

THE CLASSIFICATION OF FIBRES. 
(dr, dodge.) 
Among the many wants of man there are 
two which in all ages and in eveiy clime have 
been regarded as necessities — food and the cover- 
ing of the body. The first is an absolute essential 
to life ; the second, an adjunct either to comfort 
or appearance. In supplying the second necessity 
man has used the bark, stems, leaves and roots of 
trees, shrubs, vines, grasses and the fibrous growth 
often provided by nature to protect their fruits 
during the period of development; he has em- 
ployed the skins of animals, their shorn hair or 
wool, and, lastly, the cocoons of the silk-worm. 
At first vegetable substances could scarcely have 
been employed, for primitive man was satisfied 
with the .skin of an animal girded about hi^ loins ; 
but in time, with the dawri of creative intelligence, 
tha filaments of bark and wool and hair were 
rudely twisted into threads and coarsely woven. 
These fibres twisted again into larger threads, as 
fish lines, when knotted together formed fish nets, 
with which he was enabled to secure food, or a 
number of these threads wrought together m.ide 
him cordage. His wauts increasing as his inven- 
tive faculties were more and more developed, and 
as he became more intelligent, he felt the need of 
various utensils in the domestic economy, and 
pottery, trays and baskets were fashioned from 
clay, from twigs of bushes or trees, from rushes 
and the leaves of palms and similar plants. And 
when canes or overhanging cliffs and rock shelters 
ceased to be his protection from the elements he 
learned to build huts and to tatch them with 
palms and grasses. Having now entered upon a 
domiciliary existence and new wants being created, 
mats and screens were woven from seeds and 
sedges or from strips of palm, and primitive man 
had entered upon a kind of barbaric civilization. 
Aboriginal man is primitive in all ages, and the 
age of his particular race and his environment 
fixes the scale of his civilization. If, in the early 
Stone Age, he threw across his shoulders or girded 
above his loins the skin of an animal slaughtered 
for food, it was because such rude dress satisfied 
his simple wants in this direction. And there 
are native tribes in Africa and Australia at the 
present time wi'.h no higher desires as to 
their raiment and who still dress in skins, 
and African Tribes who still adhere to Adam's 
costume — not fig leaves, but a girdle of evergreens 
and creepers or a leafy branch, as in the Obbo 
Tribe. But the economic uses of plants were 
bound to be learned by savage man in time, and 
skill was early acquired in preparing them for 
use. We find, therefore, among the uncivilized 
races all over the world that many ipecies of 
fibre plants have become most useful for utensils, 
cords, and clothing which civilized man with all 
his intelligence and inventive genius cannot 
afford to employ commercially. It is true that 
the recognized commercial fibres represent those 
best adapted for ufo, and that many of them like 
flax, hemp, and cotton must be classed with the 
fibres of antiquity. They have established their 
places because they have been proved to be the 
best for the purposes for whicii ibey are employed 
and the others can only be considered as their 
substitutes or as simple "native ' fibres. We 
have therefore two natural groups of fibres — the 
commercial species with their substitutes which 
are soon enumei'ated, ami tlie vast group of tlie 
so-called native fibres, many of which might filly 
be termed emergency fibres, because they are 
extracted and used at the moment when needed. 
These so-called native .'ibres are also interesting, 
however, and througli our knowledge of some of 
them, or when a species finds its wuy to tlie out- 
side world, a new commercial fibre now and then 
is brought to light. They are legion when taken 
collectively, and therefore in enumerating the 
many specie* found iu the countries of the globe, 
it is very easy to secure a list that can only be 
stared in four figures. 
AVe have seen that different form* of cellular 
structure compose the fibres derived from dicoty- 
ledonous and monocotyledonous plants, as well ar 
the seed hiiirs, or other hairs, from certain specie* 
of both divi.^ions of the vegetable kingdom. Iu 
general terms, therefore, fibre is composed of 
bundles of ba«t or fibro-vascular tis-ue in the 
form of long flexible filaments, such as flax, hemp, 
or manila, or of hairs such as cotton, capable of 
being twisted or spun into threads or yarns, to be 
subsequently manufactured into cordage or fabrics. 
In the economic employment of fibrous vegetable 
material it is often the case that the fibre bundles 
are not separated or sub-divided into such delicate 
filaments as compose the cleaned fibres of flax and 
hemp, but are used in a conglomerated mass, or 
even in a more primary form, as the whole stems 
of seeds or grasses, as in matting manufacture, 
where both fibrous substances and the celluar 
tissue and woody waste is used without further 
preparation than drying. Or, still broader differ- 
entiation is found in the employoient of palm 
leaves torn into strips or the woody stems of such 
plants as the willow and sumac, which are coarsely 
woven or plaited into baskets and similar objects. 
These fibrous substances, however, are not always 
.utilized by subjecting them to the operations of 
twisting, spinning, plaiting or weaving, but are 
employed in a mass as upholstery material for the 
stuffing of cushions, mattresses, and the Uke. 
Beginning with true fibrous material, such as 
tow or the waste from scrutching flax, hemp, (fee, 
and the seed hairs of the many plants known as 
cotton and silk cotton, and coming down through 
the list we discover the use of mosses, leaves, 
and even finely sub-divided wood shavings or 
'excelsior' as forms of stuffing or packing 
material. The last named are not fibre, though ou 
account of tlieu- economic employment they are 
regarded as the substitutes of fibrous substances. 
Therefore, iu considering the many species of 
plants whick are employed ;for so many different 
uses in the industrial economy, one species oft- 
