The Yuccas.-Several species of yucca are represented in the collection, as Y. filimentosa, angustifolia, aloifolia, brevifolia, and baccata. These plants thrive in nearly all portions of the United States and produce a fiber similar to that produced by the agaves, though there is no record to show that it has ever been employed or manufactured other than experimentally. The shortness of the leaf doubtless has prevented its use by the cordage-manufacturers. It is used to some extent by the Indians and the Mexicans of Sonora and Arizona in the manufacture of a rough cordage, ropes half an inch or more in diameter, made from it, having been secured by the Department collection in Washington. The fiber possesses a moderate tenacity, but is somewhat brittle and harsh.

Dasylerion graminifolium (Bear grass).—One sample of the fiber of this plant is exhibited, said to come from Texas. It resembles istle somewhat and is probably the least valuable of the several leaf fibers that have been named. The term "bear grass" is also applied to the Yucca filamentosa.

Tillandlia usenoides (Spanish or Southern moss).—This peculiar plant belongs to the same family as the preceding species, though differing most widely in habit. In its native state it is found along the Southern or Gulf coast and to some distance inland, clinging in long, gray festoons from the branches of trees. In Brazil it is used by the country people to fill mattresses, cushions, etc., and also as packing for glassware or porcelain. In our country it is employed in the manufacture of vegetable hair and forms an admirable substitute for the curled hair used by upholsterers. The outer cellular portion is removed by steeping the plant in water, when the filaments change their color from gray to black, preserving the harsh, wiry appearance of curled hair. There are samples of both moss and "hair" in the fiber collection, including a bale of the prepared product.

OTHER FIBROUS SUBSTANCES.

One of the most interesting exhibits in the fiber collection is the series of pinefiber specimens furnished by the Acme Manufacturing Company of Wilmington, North Carolina. The raw material is the leaves of needles of the long-leaved pine (Pinus australis), which also produces the turpentine of commerce. The particular process is said to be the invention of Mr. A. F. Scott. The exhibit includes a branch of pine, the gathered needles, and samples illustrating processes of cooking, rubbing, and carding. These are followed by the various products obtained, as pine hair, surgical dressing lint, pine oil, burlap, matting, and finally bagging. The bagging is especially adapted to the baling of cotton, and it is said that the Cotton Associations are perfectly satisfied with it. As the industry is new, a description of the processes of manufacture is deemed sufficiently interesting to give in detail.

The green pine straw or leaves, gathered in the surrounding forests, is brought to the mills, where the company purchases it at 15 cents per hundred pounds. After having been weighed, the straw is carried into a shed 100 by 25 feet and is spread upon the floor to be cleaned and to prevent it from becoming heated. An elevator takes it to the second floor of the building, where it is placed in two iron cylinders set up on end and surrounded by steam pipes. These extractors are 10 feet deep and about 4 feet in width. In these the pine leaves are thoroughly steamed, the vapor going through pipes into the ordinary distillery worm in an adjoining house. Here it is condensed. The result is the pine leaf oil, the leaves yielding about one half a gallon of oil to 100 pounds of straw. The oil is a valuable product, and is destined to take an important place in the advanced pharmacopoeia. It is very highly antiseptic, possesses the advantage of being useful as well for internal as well as external application, and is valuable for many surgical and medicinal purposes. The liquid which is condensed from the vapor with the oils is useful for various purposes in the manufacture of other fabrics.

H. Ex. 410-VOL V————46

After the oil has been extracted the pine straw, which has become a beautiful black in color, is placed in six large iron vats, 7 feet wide, 8 feet long, and 5 deep, and with a capacity of holding 3,000 to 4,000 pounds each. It is here mixed with water and alkali, and thoroughly boiled, the process being necessary to remove the silica which forms the outside covering of the leaf. This is a difficult operation, requiring great skill and care. The silica which is removed is used for tanning and other purposes. During all this process of cooking the pine still retains its aroma. The last boiling process continues for twelve hours, after which the straw is soaked forty-eight hours more, and then it is ready for the machinery for rubbing up the leaves.

The straw taken from the vats and still-damp is first put into a "rubber," as it is called, and which consists of a number of cylindrical screws working together with both rotary and lateral motions.

The machine is quite complicated, and further description need not be given in this condensed account.

Suffice it to say that the straw being fed into it comes out of the other side a pure fiber of a rich dark-brown color and of a soft texture. During all these processes it is kept saturated with water, but it is next taken to the wringing and bleaching machine, where the water is squeezed out and the curing process is begun. It is then carried to the carding machine, through which it passes, and thence to the drying machine, where every particle of moisture is evaporated, and thence to the press, where it is put up in bales ready for market. The fiber is packed in burlap bales 225 pounds to a bale.

Aside from its use in the manufacture of carpets, matting, etc., the pine fiber has many other valuable qualities. A prominent Wilmington physician, to whom some of it was sent, writes as follows:

'The fiber made of pine straw is a most valuable agent in the treatment of simple and compound fracture, surgical dressing after operations and suppuration of wounds. It is superior to cotton-batting, lint, or oakum. Its aromatic odor drives away flies and prevents maggots from burrowing in wounds, and I think it is a disinfectant of the first order."

Apocynum cannabinum (Indian hemp).—An indigenous species of perennial herb, belonging to the dog-bane family, with upright branching stems 4 or 5 feet in length, having opposite leaves and a tough, reddish bark. This bark stripped from the stalks has been used by the North American Indians for a variety of uses, such as the rude manufacture of bags, mats, small ornamental baskets, boots, rope, twine, fish nets and lines, etc. It is easily separated from the stalk, and when cleaned it is quite fine, long, and tenacious. Its color is light cinnamon, though when finely prepared it is of a creamy white, and is remarkably fine and soft. The specimens in the fiber exhibit were taken from the collection of the Department of Agriculture, specimens of the seed pod accompanying the exhibit.

Asclepias.-This is a specimen of the "down" or seed vessels of the milkweed, which has been named, though wrongly, "vegetable silk." This silky substance, resembling thistle down, is produced in the pod of the plant, which, when ripe, bursts open and discharges its gossamer-like contents. The substance is of little value, unless for stuffing cushions, etc., although it has at different times attracted attention as a possible fiber material. This is the "silk plant," of which such fabulous stories are told from time to time. The milkweed or Asclepias produces a bast which furnishes a fine, long, glossy fiber that has considerable strength, and which has been ranked between hemp and flax.

Luffa cylindrica (the sponge cucumber).—The papinjay, and estrapajo of the Venezuelans. The fruit is from 6 inches to a foot in length, the interior being formed of a dense tissue of wiry fabrics, and containing three longitudinal tubes in which are found numerous black seeds. The cucumber after being stripped

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of its outer integument becomes very soft and pliant when soaked in water, and is therefore used to take the place of the sponge in the toilet, or in the household economy is used as a cloth for washing dishes. In the South, ornamental baskets and even bonnets were made from it. In the specimens shown, one example is split open to show how it is prepared for these latter uses. Several cucumbers, cut to shape, are sewed together to produce the required article. The plant is common in South America and the West Indies. The specimens in the fiber collection were purchased in the open market, there being a slight demand for the product for toilet and other purposes.

Zea mays (maize, Indian corn).—An interesting specimen in the miscellaneous fibrous substances is a horse collar made from the husks of maize by a Georgia planter. These husk collars are quite common in the South, and are often woven by the colored people, who also make a little money from the weaving of door mats from the same substance. The husks are also used in their loose form for the manufacture of mattresses, there usually being several inches of husks, faced with curled hair. Husks have also been manufactured into paper, though it is not an industry.

It was intended to supplement the fiber collection with a full series of the papermaking materials, but lack of time in preparing the exhibits, and of space in placing them on exhihition precluded the proper carrying out of this part of the exhibit, and the idea was reluctantly abandoned.

CHAPTER XXVI.

TOBACCO IN THE UNITED STATES-ITS CULTURE, CHARACTERISTICS, DISTRIBUTION, AND CONSUMPTION.

By ALEX. McDONALD.

The very general use of tobacco in every quarter of the globe; the novel circumstances of its introduction into England and the continent of Europe, and its rapid spread in the face of persistent and even vindictive opposition; the fact that a seemingly noxious plant which possesses but little, if any, positive utility, and does not at all minister to the actual necessities of man, should supply one of the principal industries of the world and one of the largest staples of commerce; and, finally, the almost universal esteem in which it is held as a luxury and solace among all classes from peasant to prince, would seem to warrant a brief reference to the circumstances of its discovery and of its introduction among the principal nations of the earth.

The Name.-The common notion that the name tobacco was derived from its having been first brought from Tobago, a small island in the West Indies, is now admitted to be erroneous. The better authority is that the plant was not, in the first instance, called by this name, notwithstanding that Benzoni (whose Travels in America were published in 1565) says that the Mexican name of the herb was "tobacco." The term appears to have come from the name of the hollow tube used for inhaling the smoke of the plant by the inhabitants of Santo Domingo, and called by them "tobacco." This is confirmed by Humboldt, who states that "tobacco” was the term most used in the Haytian language to designate the instrument employed by the natives in smoking the herb; and that the term, having been transferred by the Spaniards from the pipe to the plant itself, has been adopted by other nations.

The botanical name of the genus, Nicotiana, was adopted, according to Linnæus, in recognition of the fact that Jean Nicot, the French embassador to Portugal, sent seeds of the plant to his queen, Catherine de Medici (in 1560).

Origin.—The Chinese claim to have possessed a knowledge of tobacco centuries before its introduction into Europe; and some modern writers give credence to this claim because of the supposed discovery on very ancient Chinese sculptures of figures representing tobacco pipes similar to those now in use. But it hardly admits of reasonable doubt that the plant was solely indigenous to America, and that it became known to the rest of the world through the discoverers and settlers of that continent.

A detachment of sailors sent by Columbus to the Island of Cuba on his first voyage saw the natives carrying lighted brands to kindle fire, and perfuming them