The Old Flax Bush.

There is a great revival in store for our native flax resources, if the proposal that New Zealand should replace imported jute wool-packs and sacks with phormium tenax manufactures is vigorously pushed ahead. The stories of the enormous profits made by the great wool-pack companies in India give point to the suggestions made in several quarters that the Dominion's resources in this direction might be further developed.

Not only would the hundreds of thousands of pounds annually sent out of the country be retained at home by the establishment of a wool-pack industry, but new life would be given to a languishing trade, the milling of the leaf, and the stimulating effects would be reflected in other businesses. It would be interesting to see extended the many possibilities of an industry that was our earliest trade. Flax, the Maori-dressed fibre, was shipped from New Zealand to Sydney a hundred and forty years ago. Even the most modern of machinery cannot dress the flax leaf better than the Maori wahine did with her pipi-shell and her stone pounder.

Besides cordage of the best, our flax has been made into excellent sails for ships, and a paper has been manufactured from it. Perhaps we are only at the beginning of a new and wonderful era for the familiar and plentiful and easily grown harakeke, one of those characteristic plants that are emblematic of the real New Zealand. Let us hope that there are millions in it. All that is needed is a reasonably economical process; the market is great and ever-growing.