2. Curculigo latifolia.—

The Kew Museum is indebted to Mr. F. W. Burbidge (now Curator of the Trinity College Botanic Garden, Dublin) for a very complete series of specimens illustrating the manufacture of cloth in Borneo (where they were obtained by him during his travels) from a species of Curculigo, which has been identified by Mr. Baker with C. latifolia, Dry-and. The Dusan in N.W. Borneo, near Kina Balu, prepare the fibre by macerating and beating the leaves. It is woven into a very close cloth, about ten inches wide, in a loom of very simple construction, such as is used in Brittany for weaving saddle girths. A heavy wooden sword is used for driving close the woof after it is thrown by the shuttle between the threads of the warp. The strong fibrous leaves of Curculigo seychellensis are employed in the Seychelles for wrapping plugs of tobacco (Baker, Flora of Mauritius, p. 368), and this is apparently the only other known instance of the economic use of a hypoxidaceous plant.