Petersburg hemp cord, . . . . 170 ,, Wild rheea cord, same size as Russian, . 190 „ Rheea fibre cord, one thread larger, . . 230 „ Pound line of wild rheea, . . . . 510 „ Six-thread cord of Petersburg hemp, . . 505 „Six-thread ratline of rheea, tarred, . . 525 „ Six-thread ratline of wild rheea, tarred, . 530 „ Nine-thread ratline of wild rheea, tarred, . 860 „ Twelve-thread ratline of wild rheea, tarred, 1120 „ One-inch rope of wild rheea, . . . . 1350 „ One-and-a-half-inch rope of wild rheea, tarred, 1900 „ One-and-a-half-inch rope of wild rheea, tarred, 1900 „ Two-inch cord of Russian hemp, . . . 1800 „ Two-inch rope of rheea fibre, tarred, . . 2800 „Twelve-thread rope of plantain, made in India, 864 „ Twelve-thread rope of pine-apple, made in Ind., 924 „ Two-inch cord of Russian hemp, . . . 1800 „ Two-inch rope of dhunchee fibre, made in Ind., 1850 „ Two-inch rope of agave, usually called aloe, made in India, . . . . 1900 „ Planting and Cleaning.—When plants arc grown to produce fibres, they ought to be sown thick, to induce them to grow tall and slender and without branches, so that the straight stems may yield a greater length of fibre ; aud it may be laid down as a general rule that the softness or clearness of a fibre forms a good criterion of its strength, and vice versa.
As a general rule, every day's steeping of a fibre takes from its strength, and imparts more or less colour. Therefore, with plants having bark and woody fibres, the fibre can be purest extracted by beating them, at first, well with a wooden mallet, in order to loosen and allow the removal of the bark from the stalk, as it is gene rally on the inner surface of the bark that the fibres suitable for cordage usually occur. When the bark has been brought into a pulpy state, it should be well washed in clean water, to remove as much of the sap as possible, as this is the part in which the putrefactive process first begins. The leaves, stalks, or barks of plants should be cut when in full vigour, and in their bright green colour ; when old, dried, or decayed, they yield coarse and stiff fibre. Only so much should be cut at a time as can be cleaned within two days, and the plants when cut should not be exposed to the sun, as the sap dries up, and the process of cleaning thern is made more tedious. The sooner the sap, pulp, and irnpurities can be removed from the fibre, the cleaner and stronger will it be. If a plant be well crushed or beaten soon after it is cut, it may be immersed in water for a night, and a good deal of the injurious part of the sap will bo removed. These remarks are particularly applicable to the coir fibre. With the agave, yucca, fourcroya, and sanseviera, beat or crush the pulp with a xnallet or crushing cylinder, or a brake, and scrape away the pulp and wash the fibres. In cleaning the fibres of pulpy plants, the plants should first be bruised or crushed, and the juice which exudes may be kept to be con verted into a coarse kind of vinegar required in another process. For this part of the process the common sugar mill of India, with two perpendi cular rollers and a channel to convey the juice into some convenient vessel, answers well, and the cost does not exceed ten rupees. Where this
small sum cannot be afforded, and labour is abundant, the plant may be well beaten with wooden mallets on planks, until all the pulp is loosened. When it has assumed a pulpy con sistence, the plant should be seized at both ends and well twisted on itself in various directions to hqueeze out the sap. It should then be well washed in plenty of water, untwisted, and scraped on a board, in small handfuls at a time, with a blunt straight knife, or a long piece of hoop iron fastened into a wooden handle. IVIten all im purities are thus removed, the fibres tnay be soaked for an hour or two in clean water, and then hung up in the shade to dry, the latter being a point of much importance, as exposure to the sun at first is apt to discolour them. By this sitnple process, fibres of great length, of a silky appearance, and of a good colour, can readily be prepared. The scrapings should be well washed, and set aside in the shade to dry as tow for packing, or as a material for making paper. This process is applicable to all fleshy or pulpy plants, such a.s these known as aloe plants, the agave and yuc,ca, sanseviera and plantain. Prices have been obtained in England for fibres cleaned in this manner, double those offered for fibres sent at the same time, but which had been cleaned by the ordinary rotting process.
In order to SAVO labour, the usual practice has been to steep the plants till the sap and vegetable juices are thoroughly decomposed, as the fibre can then in most instances be easily beaten or washed out; but this method, though applicable to a certain extent in cold climates, where decomposition takes place slowly, is found in India to be very injurious to the fibre, and to be ahnost inapplicable in warm climates, where fermentation often passes into putrefaction within three days, and the de composed sap acquires acid and other properties, which not only deprive the fibres of their strength, but discolour them in such a way as to render them quite unfit for manufacturing purposes. Most vegetable substances contain, besides the fibrous tissue, sap, cellular tissue, and a little colouring matter. The s.ap consists usually of water, gum, fecula, and alkali, with occasionally tannin. When plants are dead or dried up, they pass into a red or brown, usually streaked with deep yellow and grey. It is often possible to detect a regular succession of colours iu the different parts of the same plant, and a few very useful lessons may be drawn from thein,—lst, That the pale yellow or greenish parts of a pltuit contain fresh, tender fibres ; 2d, that the deep green parts of a plant contain fibres in full vigour ; and 3d, that red or brown parts indicate that the fibre is past its prime and beginning to detay. In the latter case, the fibre becomes stiff, harsh and often brittle. If plants be cut and exposed io the air or steeped in water the saute succession of colours may be observea while they are drying or passing into decomposition, and these form a criterion by which the value of the fibre may be detected.