THE TECHNOLOGIST [Aug. 1, 1865. 
34 THE BAMBOO AS A PAPEH MATERIAL. 
streams, and is of most rapid growth. We have been informed that 
bamboo-sticks laid down on the side of a stream will grow readily and 
spread with such profusion that in six months it may be cut, and 
then the growth, as age increases, becomes more rapid and more profuse. 
But, as anyone who has travelled in the country will bear us out in 
saying, there is no need of planting, in other words, cultivating it, as it 
already abounds everywhere in the island equal to the demand, be that 
ever so great, that may be made for it. Hitherto it has been turned to 
no account, its greatest use being as fuel on the sugar estates ; but of 
late we see it brought into Kingston in large quantities for exportation, 
it having been discovered in America to be an excellent substitute for 
rags in the manufacture of paper. An enterprising American here now 
has been purchasing and shipping it to New York. We have seen some 
paper of a coarse description made from it, and it appears to us 
superior to the common straw paper imported here ; but it is not the 
inferior article that we have seen alone that it can produce : we 
have been assured that the finest descriptions of writing paper are 
manufactured from it. This fact being established it seems to us to 
require only a little exertion for converting into an exportable article of 
some value a product that has hitherto been utterly valueless. The 
war has forced upon the Americans the necessity for discovering a sub- 
stitute for rags in the manufacture of paper ; but in England and other 
countries, from a somewhat different cause, an equally pressing necessity 
also exists for a like substitute. The British paper-makers are com- 
plaining of the heavy duty upon rags as well as the scarcity of that 
material. — l We confess that we find it difficult to understand,' says a 
London paper dealing with the subject, 'how the amount of the 
foreign rag duty can possibly produce the disastrous consequences to 
the paper manufacture at home, which according to the representatives 
of the trade, have been visited upon it. Nor, in any case, does an 
appeal to the Treasury seem the rational way of meeting a commercial 
inconvenience arising out of the protective system of some foreign 
country. In most other instances when a difficulty has arisen about 
obtaining a full supply of a peculiar raw material from abroad, 
ingenuity has simply been bidden to go to work and find out some 
means of supplying the want by the invention of a substitute for the 
restricted article.' Ingenuity has not to go far, or to work long to 
attain its mission. An excellent substitute has already been found in 
the bamboo or hollow cane of Jamaica, which we doubt not could be 
forwarded to the British paper-makers at a much lower rate than that 
at which foreign rags can be obtained. At all events, let the experiment 
be tried. Let the fact be known in England that we have here, and are 
ready to supply it cheap and in abundance, the very article they desire, 
and if bamboo prove, as we are assured it has proved, the very best 
material for the manufacture of paper, then we shall have two markets 
— two distinct set of customers — for the raw material, which we can 
