1 Nov., 1897.] QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 383 
exports are doubling every year; and from the present activity with which the 
inhabitants are going in for the industry the island bids fair to eclipse Yucatan, 
Mexico, the Bahamas, and other places where sisal is produced. ‘There is an 
unlimited demand for the article in Hurope, and Queensland need not fear 
over-competition in this. 
The plant is easily propagated, thrives in the poorest of soils—in fact, will 
grow where nothing else will—and yields a finer fibre than if grown on really 
rich soil. The plant is very hardy, stands any amount of dry weather, requires 
little or no attention after planting, has no diseases nor enemies ; cattle will not 
even touch it—in fact, are used as the means of keeping the weeds in check. It 
gives a most valuable and easily manipulated fibre. In the Bahamas, not so 
very long since, this plant was looked upon in exactly the same light as rabbits 
are here in Australia—an inevitable, irremediable pest—but now it is fostered 
and made much of, being considered the only means of salvation of the country. 
The Bahamas variety of Agave, the “ Pita,” is considered as producing the 
finest and highest priced fibre, a sample haying recently sold in London for 
£50 15s. per ton. 
All authorities concur in the statement that sisal hemp gives a net return 
of 75 per cent. on the capital invested. The machinery is most simple and 
inexpensive, the market for the fibre is already established, and the demand is 
unlimited. The cost of planting and maintaining 120 acres for four years 
before any return is obtained is reckoned at £918, including interest on an 
outlay at 10 per cent. ; the cost of manufacture, machinery, &c., for the fifth and 
sixth years amounts to £3,130; total, £4,043. The yield during the fifth and 
sixth years is calculated at 180 tons of fibre of the value of £9,000; profit 
in six years, £4,957. This is not considered as at all a too sanguine estimate— 
in fact, rather unfavourable than otherwise. 
Boranrtcan. 
Agave, Linn. Gen. Pl. II. 788, is the name of a large and important 
genus belonging to the natural order Amaryllidew. There are several 
species, all originally natives of Central America, and chiefly of Mexico. They 
are now, however, widely acclimatised in most warm, temperate, or sub-tropical 
and tropical countries. They are commonly, but erroneously, called “ American 
aloes.” From the Aloe proper they are botanically separated by the position 
of the ovary, which is inferior in the Agave, but superior in the aloe. 5 
They take several years to reach the flowering stage, and from the fact 
that, in adverse circumstances, their development may be retarded from ten to 
fifty, even to 100 years, they are popularly called the “ Century Plants.” 
VARIETIES. 
Of the sisal hemp plant, Agave rigida, there are several varieties, but 
the three chief ones from which the sisal hemp of commerce is extracted 
are ;— 
(1) Agave rigida, var. elongata, of a grayish-green colour, with thorny 
spines on the edges of the leaves. 
(2) Agave rigida, var, sisalana, of a dark-green colour, haying no spines 
on the edges of the leaves, the absence of which facilitates handling. 
(3) Agave Heteracantha, known as “Ixtl” in Mexico, is largely used 
in the manufacture of nail and scrubbing brushes, for which pur- 
pose a very great demand exists for the fibre. It is also used in 
the manufacture of corsets, and recently in the manufacture of 
artificial flowers. 
In the Mauritius, however, the plant furnishing what is known commer- 
cially as Mauritius hemp, is the Howrcroya gigantea, or, popularly, the Green 
Aloe. This plant is erroneously supposed to be an Agave. It belongs, however, 
to the same natural order as the Agave—viz., Amaryllidex. 
