HOETICULTURAL JOURNAL. 235 
this country f^r packing furniture, as well as for gardening purposes, and 
for covering the floor. To every pair of shoes, from two to four young 
linden stems, at least three years old, are requisite. The consumption, 
therefore, is enormous, and the destruction of the linden tree in conse- 
quence immense. For the better and larger kind of mats, trees of from 
eight to sixteen years are cut down when full of sap, and the bark is imme- 
diately separated both from the tree and the branches. When removed, 
it is stretched on the ground to dry, two or three strips being laid one over 
the other, and kept straight by being tied down to long poles. They are 
employed for making ropes in some parts of England, and for well-ropes in 
France. When required for use they are steeped in water, which causes 
the cortical layers readily to separate from ^ach other. The best of these 
layers are those which are in the interior, while the coarser layers are on 
the outside. 
" The manufacture of mats is nearly confined to Russia and to some 
parts of Sweden. Trees of from six inches to one foot in diameter are 
selected in the woods, and in the beginning of summer the bark is stripped 
from the trees in lengths of from six feet to eight feet. These, after being 
steeped in water, are separated into ribands or strands, which are hung up 
in the shade, and in the course of the summer are manufactured into mats. 
The fishermen of Sweden make fishing nets out of the fibres of the inner 
bark." (pp. 233-4.) 
The production of mats alone in Russia is estimated at fourteen millions 
of pieces ; of which, in 1853, about six hundred and sixty thousand were 
imported into England. At a shilling each, these mats were worth about 
thirty thousand pounds. It will not be difficult to find a substitute for this 
matting among the cheap products of India, should the supply from Russia 
to any extent be stopped. 
But we mention this home linden tree and its fibrous bark chiefly as an 
illustration of the close connection in economical qualities which exists 
between different plants even when they grow in far separate countries, 
provided they belong to the same natural family. The linden tree (Tilia) 
is the type of a large natural family, the Tiliacece, in every species belong- 
ing to which family the economical botanist would expect to find more or 
* less prominently developed some one or other of the distinctive products 
of the lime tree of northern Europe. Accordingly, in the hotter countries 
of Asia, the coarse matting fibre of the Russian lime tree changes into the 
soft and silky fibre of the corchorus, called by the Malays China hemp, but 
known in India and England by the name of Jute. 
In the neighborhood of Aleppo, the traveller sees growing in the fields, 
and occasionally served upon his table, a species of this genus Corchorus, 
com^monly known as the Jew's mallow, or Olus Judaicum. It is the Cor- 
cJiorus oUtorius of botanists, and is eaten as a pot-herb in Syria, in Arabia, 
