UPHOLSTERY AND STUFFING FIBERS This group includes a large number of fibrous materials of vegetable origin. The straw of flax, grown for seed and threshed in an ordinary grain threshing machine, thus ruining it for textile pur poses, is put through a series of fluted rollers, which crush it and fit it for a coarse stuffing material used in couches, car seats and carriage cushions.
Grin vegetal is a fiber obtained from a small palm, Chanuerops hunting, native in Algeria and cultivated in southern Europe. The leaves of the plant are shredded and the strands twisted into a coarse yarn, making, when picked open, an elastic material somewhat like curled hair. A similar material is also made from the leaves of the saw palmetto, which grows in great abundance over hundreds of acres in Florida and westward along the gulf coast of Texas.
_Florida mess (Dendropogon, or Tillandsia, lane oides), not a true moss, but a flowering epiphytic plant of the same family as the pineapple, grows in abundance on trees along rivers and bayous in the coast region from the Dismal Swamp of Virginia to Florida and Mexico. When abundant it is very injurious to the trees on which it grows, often be coming a serious pest in orange groves. In many places in Florida it is collected, and placed in heaps until fermented to loosen the outer covering, which is removed by running it through a crude machine consisting essentially of a revolving toothed cylin der and toothed concaves. The tough inner fibrous material resembling horse-hair is extensively used for cushions and mattresses.
Kapok is a soft cotton-like down growing in the seed-pods of the silk-cotton trees, Ceiba pentandra, Ceiba grandifiara and Bomber ntalabaricum, native in the tropics of both hemispheres. Although
abundant in many parts of the tropics, nearly all of the kapok of commerce comes from the Dutch East Indies and Ceylon. The pods are collected from the wild trees, and the down separated from the outer covering and from most of the seeds and packed for shipment. It is too short and brittle for spinning, but it is very light, fluffy and elastic, making an excellent substitute for feathers for cushions, pillows and mattresses; and it is also used in place of cork and hair in life-preservers.
Literature.
Herbert R. Carter, The Spinning and Twisting of Long Vegetable Fibers, London, 1904 ; Charles Richards Dodge, A Descriptive Catalogue of Useful Fiber Plants of the World, Washington, 1897 ; John W. Gilmore, Preliminary Report on Commer cial Fibers of the Philippines, Manila, 1903 ; Wil liam I. Hannan, Textile Fibers of Commerce, Lon don, 1902; J. Forbes Royle, The Fiber Plants of India, London, 1855 ; Jose C. Segura, El Maguey, Memoria sobre el cultivo y beneficio de sus pro ductos, Mexico, 1901 ; H. Vetillart, Etudes sur les fibres vegetales employees dans l'industrie, Paris, 1876; Julius Zipser, Textile Raw Materials and Their Conversion into Yarns, London, 1901 ; Vege table Fibers, Bulletin of Miscellaneous Information, Additional Series II, Royal Gardens, Kew, 1898. Rafael Barba, El Henequen en Yucatan, Mexico, 1905 ; Harold H. Mann, Sisal-Hemp Culture in the Indian Tea Districts, Calcutta, 1904 ; T. F. Hunt, The Forage and Fiber Crops in America, 1907.