Colonial Exhibition, 1886. 27 
sources of food for silk-worms other than Bornbyx mori, 
that it might be far from difficult to establish silk-worm 
culture here. 
There is probably no minor produ6l of British Guiana 
from which greater results have been expe6ted than from 
FIBRES. There are so many fibre plants growing wild 
in this colony, samples of which it costs little to collect, 
and apparently possessing useful and valuable qualities, 
that people are often tempted to turn to these as a more 
than probable source of profit. Reports and quotations 
based on samples sent to London or elsewhere, often 
raise hopes and stimulate efforts, but hitherto there have 
been no satisfa<5iory results. Nor is this confined to 
the produfts of British Guiana. Mr. CROSS, the reporter 
on Miscellaneous Fibres, says this department of industry 
has been, perhaps, exceptionally fruitful of baseless enter- 
prise — of abortive attempts to make into commercial 
undertakings that which careful antecedent investigation 
would have consigned to the long list of the unprofitable. 
The question also arises : — Is there any necessity for an ex- 
tended application of the multitudinous vegetable fibres ? 
Are not those fibres now in possession, sufficient, not 
only in supply but in kind, i.e. } in variety, for all the possible 
purposes of vegetable textiles ? Supposing the supply 
insufficient, are we not rather to seek the remedy in 
improved methods of producing and treating our present 
raw materials, than in introducing new ones? Especially 
since a new fibre means new methods and machinery for 
agriculturists and spinners. 
It would take too much space to transcribe Mr. CROSS'S 
highly interesting remarks on the stru6lure and pro- 
perties of various kinds of fibre. They are grouped as 
D 2 
