PRESTOS— BAMIE fIBBS. 
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Fibre-cleaning machines of a special construction might 
be brought to aid largely in the manufacture of this fibre, 
but it is hardly to be expected that machinery will be of 
such efficiency as to so completely supersede the manual 
assistance by which the supply of Ramio fibre is at pre- 
sent produced that the employment of laborers skilled in 
the industry by long training will be rendered unnecessary. 
The high price of £70 per ton, which the Indian Ramie 
has fetched, I am informed on good authority m longer 
obtains, and that price was realized by samples of excep- 
tionally fine quality, as are the highest prices quoted at the 
present day, and which samples are obtained only by very 
skilful treatment, especially in manipulation, said to be 
afforded only by persons like the Ramio cultivators in 
China and India, who are instructed from their infancy in 
the art of its culture and manufacture. 
The returns, as shown in the Circular of the American 
Ramie Fibre Company, resulting from experimental plant- 
ing by Mr. Hall of E"ew Orleans, are truly enormous, being 
2,500 lbs. per acre, and much beyond what might be ex- 
pected to be realized here. The calculation, however, by 
which these figures have been obtained, is based on an 
assumed production of 100 stems per square yard as a 
single crop, and on a production of 1 lb. of fibre for every 
200 stems. I do not think, however, as I have already 
stated, that more than 40 good stems could be produced 
on the square yard here as a single crop ; and in calcula- 
ting from this, allowance must be made for the space 
taken up by paths or alleys necessarity intersecting the 
grounds at intervals of four feet for convenience in weed- 
ing, watering, cutting and admitting air amongst the 
