The Manilla hemp, from which a fabric of the finest texture is prepared, is made from the leaves of the Musa Several varie ties of the banana are cultivated in the Dekhan, —the large red, the green, and the yellow. A small sort, which is supposed to be the real banana of the West Indies, is perhaps the most luxuriant. The plants blossom at all seasons, and so soon as the drupe of fruit begins to ripen, which is known by some turning colour, it is cut and hung up to ripen in the house. The plant will not bear again, and if not cut down it will perish of itself, on which the surrounding shoots grow up and blossom as the former. The plants are generally grown in beds or clusters in a good, rich soil, when fine fruit is almost the sure return. In transplanting the shoots of 2 or 3 feet high, about one-half is generally cut off •, the green fruit is used in curries ; the natives of the Penin sula of India also use in their curries the extrem ities of the flower shoots, the heart of the stem, and that portion of it from which the roots pr@ceed.
The stem yields a fine white silky fibre of 5 or 6 feet in length, specifically lighter than hemp, flax, and aloe fibre, by ith or *th, and pos sessing considerable strength. The plantain will flourish in almost any soil where the climate is warm and moist. A young shoot being planted attains maturity in eight months, producing a bunch of fruit weighing 30, 50, and even 100 lbs., and throwing out from its roots and around its stem from 7 to 10 fresh shoots. These will each become a distinct plant, producing its own bunch of fruit. There may be from 300 to 400 plants in an acre, each producing on au average seven suckers, thus making iu all from 2100 to 3200 plants in an acre. The produce of fruit at the lowest estimation would be from 900 to 1200 lbs. annually ; and this fruit has its market value.
The plant is cultivated everywhere in Southern India, where the varieties are the rustaley, superior table plantain ; poovaley, or small guindy variety; payvaley, a pale ash-coloured sweet fruit ; rnon den, 3-sided coarse fruit ; shevaley, large red fruit ; and putchay laden, or long-carved green fruit. All these yield fibres, but of very different quality. This fibre has a particular tendency to rot and to become stiff, brittle, and discoloured by steeping in the green state, and it has been ascertained by trial that the strength is in pro portion to the cleanness of the fibre. If it have been well cleaned, and all the sap quickly removed, it bears immersion in water as well as most other fibres, and is about the same strength as Russian hemp. The coarse large-fruited plantains yield the strongest and thickest fibres ; the smaller kinds yield fine fibres, suited for weaving, and, if care fully prepared, these have a glossy appearance like silk. This gloss, however, can only be got by cleaning rapidly, and before the sap has time to stain the fibre ; it is soon lost if the plant be steeped in water. The rope ought not to be hard
spun, as it becomes stiffer when wet, and is liable to snap if it get into a twist or knot. Almost every part of the plantain may be converted into fibre, but it most abounds in the stem and leaves, and can be made available for textile or cordage purposes. The combings or tow separated during the preparation of the fibres is of value as a sub stitute for horse-hair for stuffing mattresses, etc. ; and the peduncle of the core can be pounded into balf-stuff for the paper-makers, and form an excellent material for the finest or the toughest kinds of paper. In the West Indies the spiral vessels are employed as tinder. In the process of preparation of plantain fibre, the stem should be cut down six inches above the ground, and then divided longitudinally into four parts, and the juice expelled by passing each slip longitudinally through the common sugar - mill, with grooved bard-wood rollers, or a mill the rollers of which are 3 feet long and one foot in diameter. In the process of crushing, the stalks and the harder and softer parts of the stem should be passed through separately, which can be easily effected if the rollers be horizontal. In this way the produce will be four or five pounds of fibre from each tree. The fibres from the midrib of the leaf are the best ; and in general if the stein yield four pounds nett of fibre, the stalk will give one pound out of four. After the crushing, the fibres are to be well washed and boiled in soda or other alkaline ley to separate the gluten and colouring matter, keeping the fibres from the several parts quite separate in this process of boiling. They are then bleached, and the highest coloured fibres do not require more than six hours, but the darkest from twelve to eighteen. The finest plantain fibre, when carefully cleaned and dressed, by what may be termed the `fresh process,' in contradistinction to the system of rotting the fibres free, has been said to be well suited for the imitation of silk in carriage braid and carpet work. The average value put upon such fibres was said to be £70 per ton, when Russian hemp was selling at £50 per ton. In the West Indies, the total expense of producing a ton of fibres was calculated at £9, 13s. 4d. Early in the year 1880, two gentlemen in Bombay commenced operations on a moderate scale at Bassein, giving employ ment to about 40 day-labourers for a period of above one year ; the out-turn of fibre, waste, and paper-stuff, produced at the rate of two tons per diem by the simplest conceivable machinery, and at comparatively trifling cost, readily com manding the following prices, on 9th December 1880, in the Liverpool markets :—Plantain fibre, £20 per ton ; plantain waste, £10 per ton ; plan tain tow, £10 per ton.