contains two smooth rollers, one of wood and the other of iron, about a foot long and an inch thick, in a manner close to each other. While one hand gives motion to the first of these rollers, and the foot to the second, the other hand applies the cotton, which is drawn through and separated from the seeds which remain behind. Afterward they card and spin the cotton, and weaving it, convert it into calico.

On the island of Sumatra the silk cotton tree flourishes near the city of Acheen. These trees are large, and have a smooth ashcoloured rind, and are generally full of fruit, which hangs down at the ends of the twigs like purses, three or four inches long. No tree can grow more regular and uniform: the lower branches being always the largest and longest, and the upper gradually lessening to the top. When the cotton is ripe, the cods drop off the tree, for the cotton is so short, that it is not thought worth gathering; though they will sometimes take the pains to pick it off the ground, to stuff their quilts with.

The cotton shrub of Hindostan is of great use, for of this they manufacture ginghams, muslins, calicoes, &c. and therefore, every year, sow large fields with the seed.

The cotton tree is also cultivated there, and grows to a great height. The fruit, if it may be so called, or pod, becomes of the size of a hen's egg; and then bursting, like that of the shrub, yields a fine white wool.

In Abyssinia, the cotton shrub is extremely plentiful.

[Linn. Lockyer. Barrow. Lettres Edifiantes et Curieuses.

SECTION III.

New Zealand Flax.

Phormium tenax.-WILDEN.

THE systematic name for the common flax is linum, of which there are twenty-five known species; the linum usitatissimum, or peculiarly useful linum, being that employed in our manufactories of linen: several of the other species, however, being useful to a certain extent for other purposes. The flax before us is of a different genus, and is called phormium; it possesses but one species, that described above by the name of tenax. It is exquisitely

before long be transplanted to New South Wales, and be found growing with equal luxuriancy in that territory. In the former country it flourishes every where near the sea, and in some places a considerable way up the hills, in bunches or tufts, with sedge-like leaves, bearing on a long stalk yellowish flowers, which are succeeded by a long roundish pod, filled with very thin shining black seeds.

This plant serves the inhabitants instead of flax and hemp, and excels all that are put to the same purposes in other countries. Even of this plant there are two sorts, and the leaves of both resemble those of flax, but the flowers are smaller, and their clusters more numerous; in one kind they are of a deep red, and in the other yellow. Of the leaves of these plants, with very little preparation, they make all their common apparel; and of these they also make their strings, lines, and cordage, for every purpose; which are so much stronger than any thing we can make with hemp, as not to bear a comparison. By another preparation they draw from the same plant long slender fibres, which shine like silk, and are as white as snow: of these, which are also surprisingly strong, the finer cloths are made; and of the leaves, without any other preparation than splitting them into proper breadths, and tying the strips together, they make their fishing nets, some of which are of an enormous size. This plant, which is found in hill and valley, in the driest mould and in the deepest bogs (but that in the bogs is the largest), would be a great acquisition to England, could it be brought to flourish here. With this view Captain Furneaux brought over a quantity of the seed: and after quitting New Zea land, he touched at no other land than the Cape of Good Hope, until he arrived at Spithead, having traversed one entire hemis. phere of the globe in seven months. These seeds were imme. diately carried to his Majesty, and by his order sown in Kew garden; but the whole unfortunately failed, and there with the hope of acquiring this valuable vegetable.

[Cook. Miller. Editor.

SECTION IV.

Indigo.

Indigofera tinctoria.-LINN.

THE indigofera genus is extensive, embracing not less than fiftyone known species, chiefly natives of India and of the Cape. The most important of the whole is that now before us, the common in. digo plant, specifically denominated by Linnéus from its useful dye, indigofera tinctoria. This plant is now chiefly cultivated in North and South Carolina, and the neighbouring state of Georgia; the dye obtained from it bears the name of the plant which produces it; which was probably so called from India, where it was first cultivated, and from which country, for a considerable time, the whole of what was consumed in Europe was brought. This plant, when grown, resembles the fern, and when young is scarcely dis tinguishable from lucern grass. Indigo is generally planted after the first rains which succeed the vernal equinox: the seed is put into the ground in small straight trenches, about eighteen or twenty inches asunder, and is fit for cutting the beginning of July. It cuts again toward the end of August, and if a mild autumn suc. ceeds, there is a third cutting at Michaelmas. The indigo land must be weeded every day, and the plants cleansed from worms. Each acre yields sixty or seventy pounds weight of indigo, which at a medium is worth fifty pounds.

The indigo when cut is first laid in a vat about twelve or four. teen feet long, and four deep, to the height of about fourteen inches, to macerate and digest. Then this vessel, which is called the steeper, is filled with water: the whole having lain about twelve or sixteen hours, according to the weather, begins to ferment, swell, rise, and grow insensibly warm; at this time spars of wood are run across to prevent its rising too much, and a pin is then set to mark the highest point of its ascent: when it falls below this mark, they judge that the fermentation has attained its due pitch, and begins to abate; upon which the manager turns a cock, and lets off the water into another vat, which is called the beater; and the gross matter that remains in the first vat is carried off to manure the ground.

digo, has run into the second vat, they agitate it till it heats, froths, ferments, and rises above the rim of the vessel in which it is contained to allay this violent fermentation, oil is thrown in as the froth rises, which causes it instantly to subside. After this beating has been continued from twenty to thirty minutes, a small muddy grain begins to he formed; and when this is completed lime water is added from an adjacent vessel; when the indigo gra. nulates more fully, the liquor assumes a purple colour, and after being well stirred together with the lime water is allowed to settle. The clear water is then permitted to run off into a succession of vessels, so that every portion of the indigo carried away may have an opportunity of settling and being preserved; when the thick purple sand, which forms the residuum, is put into bags of coarse linen. These are suspended till the moisture is drained off, after which the clotted material is turned out of the bags and worked upon boards of a porous timber with a wooden spatula. It is, at the same time, frequently exposed to the morning and evening sun, but only for a short period at a time, and is then put into boxes or frames, where it is again exposed to the sun in the same cautious manner; till with great labour and attention the operation is finished, and that valuable drug called indigo fitted for the market. The greatest skill and care is required in every part of the process, without which there is great danger of spoiling the whole.

In the American states much attention has been paid to encourage the cultivation of indigo; for which purpose, the uniform of the national troops is blue, as also that of the militia in general: the clergy are also allowed, by the established custom of the coun. try, to wear that colour; and it is generally adopted, both by the most frugal and most expensive people: all which circumstances operate favourably for the indigo planters, without any expence to the country.

In Hindustan the indigo-shrub grows to the height of a goose. berry bush, and has a thick round head, but no thorns. The people strip off the leaves, and having laid them in a heap, they lie several days, till they have sweated, and are then put into deep vessels, with a sufficient quantity of water, to which they give their blue tincture. The water is afterward drained into broad shallow vessels, made of a kind of plaster of Paris, where the sun having exhaled all the moisture, there remains at bottom a hard dry cake,

about a quarter of an inch thick, which is our indigo. The best sort is brought from Biana, near Agra, and a coarser kind is made near Amadabad.

In the kingdom of Morocco, the province of Tafilet produces indigo which grows without art or culture, and yields a more vivid and lasting blue than that produced in the West Indies.

SECTION V.

Logwood.

[Linn. Cox. Barton.

Hæmatoxylum campechianum.-LINN.

THE campechianum is the only species of the hæmatoxylum hitherto discovered; it is a much smaller tree than the guaiacum, and both the trunk and the branches are extremely crooked, and covered with dark-coloured rough bark; the smaller ramifications are numerous, close, prickly, or beset with strong sharp spines; the leaves are pinnated, generally composed of four or five pair of pinnæ, of an irregular oval shape, obliquely nerved, and obtusely sinuated at the top; the flowers grow in racemi, or in close regular terminal spikes, and appear in March; the calyx divides into five oblong obtuse segments, of a brownish purple colour; the petals are five, patent, obtusely lance-shaped, and of a reddish yellow colour; the stamina are somewhat hairy, tapering, of unequal length, shorter than the corolla, and the antheræ are small and oval; the style is nearly the length of the stamina, and the germen becomes a long double valved pod, which contains many oblong compressed, or somewhat kidney-shaped, seeds.

This tree is a native of South America, and grows to the highest perfection at Campeachy, in the Bay of Honduras, whence the seeds were brought to Jamaica, in 1715, with a view of propagating it as an article of commercial export. And though it does not appear to have answered this purpose so fully as could have been wished, yet we are told that in some parts of the island, especially where the ground is swampy, this tree, in the course of three years, will rise to the height of ten feet, and by this quick and luxuriant growth, soon overrun and destroy the neighbouring plants*. The

* In some parts of Jamaica, are such quantities of it, growing wild, as to incommode the land-holders extremely." Long's 1. c. 754. He also observes, that “it makes an excellent and beautiful fence, which, if kept properly trimmed, grows so strong and thick, that nothing can break through