VARIETY OF USES. 
53 
long narrow slips, tied up in bunches, and used by 
the natives to ornament their hair. Its remarkable 
flexibility, beautiful whiteness, and glossy surface, 
render it a singularly novel, light, and elegant 
plume ; the effect of which is heightened by its 
contrast with the black and shining ringlets of the 
native hair it surmounts. As the leaf increases in 
size, and the matting is exposed to the air, it be¬ 
comes coarser and stronger, assuming a yellowish 
colour, and is called aa . 
There is a kind of seam along the centre, 
exactly under the stem of the leaf, from both sides 
of which long and tough fibres, about the size of a 
bristle, regularly diverge in an oblique direction. 
Sometimes there appear to be two layers of fibres, 
which cross each other, and the whole is cemented 
with a still finer, fibrous, and adhesive substance. 
The length and evenness of the threads or fibres, 
the regular manner in which they cross each other 
at oblique angles; the extent of surface, and the 
thickness of the piece, corresponding with that 
of coarse cotton cloth; the singular manner in 
which the fibres are attached to each other- 
cause this curious substance, woven in the loom 
of nature, to present to the eye a remarkable 
resemblance to cloth spun and woven by human 
ingenuity. 
This singular fibrous matting is sometimes taken 
off by the natives in pieces two or three feet wide, 
and used as wrapping for their arrow-root, or made 
into bags. It is also occasionally employed in 
preparing articles of clothing. Jackets, coats, and 
even shirts, are made with the aa , though the 
coarsest linen cloth would be much more soft and 
flexible. To these shirts the natives generally fix 
a cotton collar and wristbands, and seem suscepti- 
