Phormium Tenax (the New Zealand Hemp).

The history of what is termed the flax industry in New Zealand affords a remarkable instance of the difficulty experienced in developing the natural resources of a country if the commodities to be disposed of have not a previously-established market value.

When the colonists first arrived in New Zealand the valuable qualities of the Phormium fibre were well known, as it was in constant use by the Natives, and a very considerable trade in the article existed as early as 1828, when the Islands were only visited by whalers and Sydney traders, fifty thousand pounds' worth of the fibre being sold in Sydney alone between 1828 and 1832. At Grimsby, in Lincolnshire, a manufactory was also established in the latter year for the production of articles from the New Zealand fibre, which failed from some unexplained cause, notwithstanding that the results were not considered at the time unsatisfactory. From 1853 to 1860 the average annual value of the fibre exported was nearly £62,500, reaching as high as .65,000 in 1855; but up to that time the only fibre exported was that prepared by Native labour, no machinery of any kind being employed in producing the exported article. In 1860, therefore, when the Native disturbances affected the Waikato and other interior districts in the North Island, the preparation was confined to the Native tribes north of Auckland, so that the average export value was only £150 per annum. Attention was then directed towards the contrivance of machinery with the aid of which the fibre could be page 16 profitably extracted by European labour. In 1861 the increasing demand for white rope, and the limited quantity of manilla (which fibre depends for its production on native manual labour in the Phillipine Islands), led to a rise in its value from £21 to £56 per ton, and even to £76 per ton in America during the late civil war. These high prices stimulated the endeavour to introduce Phormium fibre to compete with manilla, and several machines were invented for rapidly producing the fibre from the green leaf. With these machines the export trade again increased, so that from 1866 to 1871 the yearly average was valued at £56,000. This sudden revival of the trade led many to embark in it who were not only unacquainted with the new form of manufacture, but also unaccustomed to any kind of business that required special mechanical skill and careful elaboration of the details of management.

Commissioners were appointed in 1869 and 1870 to investigate and report on the manufacture and cultivation of the plant and the particular requirements of the market.

Recently the term "flax" has been changed to "hemp," with great advantage to the position which the fibre holds in the brokers' sale-rooms; but the fibre can be prepared so as to mix advantageously with true Linum flax in the manufacture of textile fabrics, and the shortness of the ultimate fibre is not an insuperable obstacle even to its being spun into unmixed yarns. It will, therefore, in all probability, be necessary to adopt two names for the fibre to indicate the purpose for which it has been specially prepared, such, for instance, as Phormium hemp and Phormium flax. Samples of serge-sheeting, canvas-sacking, and other varieties of cloth from unmixed Phormium fibre, have been manufactured in Scotland and sent out to the colony, and also samples of a very superior kind of canvas made from an admixture of Phormium with Riga flax. The fibre used in these experimental manufactures was prepared by Mr. C. Thorne by the use of alkaline solutions, and it is stated that such fibre would find a ready market in large quantities at from £60 to £90 per ton. Whether this would be as profitable an application of the fibre as the production of hemp is, however, not yet established.

It is a matter of considerable interest that the coarser descriptions of Phormium hemp are again in demand for the purpose of manufacturing the stiff harsh twine that is best adapted for the self-binding reaping-machines.

The total quantity of Phormium exported between the years 1861 and 1876 amounted to 26,434 tons, valued at [unclear: 592,218]. The quan-

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tity exported in 1878 amounted to 622½ tons, valued at £10,666; in 1881 to 1,307 tons 15cwt., valued at £26,285, and in 1884 to 1,624 tons, valued at £24,500.