64 TlMEHRI. 
Mr. Quelch read the following report on Crowa fibre : — 
After various enquiries in many parts of the Colony, I 
beg to report for the information of the Society, as 
follows : — 
1. That Crowa is a form of the pine-apple, though 
differing from the common wild and cultivated pines, in 
the fa6l that its leaves are smooth, and not spined along 
the edges. Through Mr. G. S. Jenman, the Government 
Botanist and Superintendent of the Botanic Gardens, I 
have derived the information, that though the plant has 
been described under two separate specific names. 
Ananas mordilona^ and Ananas glaber^ it is yet speci- 
fically identical with the common pine, Ananas sativus. 
Unlike the cultivated pines, the Crowa sends out no shoots 
from under the fruit, but is propagated by the suckers 
from the basal root-stock, as in the wild pines. 
From its general characters, therefore, Crowa may be 
regarded as a well-marked variety of the common pine. 
2. Above all others, the fibre of the Crowa is known 
to the Indians and the river people generally, as the 
strongest obtainable, and the plant is therefore grown 
.in small quantities for the supply of hammock ropes, 
bow-ropes, fish-lines, and even for thread. Where the 
supply in any distri6l is not equal to the demand, the 
fibre is obtained by barter or purchase from other distri6ls, 
the price in some low-lying parts of the Essequebo 
coast, for instance, being about 48 cents per hundred of 
the unprepared leaves. 
3. Owing to the small extent of cultivation at present, 
it would be quite impossible to procure the fibre in large 
quantities, and even were the cultivation much extended* 
it seems very doubtful whether the system of extra6lion 
