Volltext Seite (XML)
116 JOHN RUTHERFORD of weaving but with the utmost difficulty. A gentleman once showed me a pair of trousers made of this material. They appeared quite rough and nearly worn out, though they had been used but for a few weeks. “Although making cloth of it, however, is out of the question, it is admirably fitted for rope and twine of all descriptions. It will, therefore, prove highly valuable to our shipping and fishing interests. Another friend of mine made some rope of it, which, when proved by the breaking machine, bore, I think, nearly double the strain of a similar-sized rope made of Russian hemp. The great strength and tenacity of the New Zealand flax appears to me to be owing to the fibres, though naturally short, being firmly united by an elastic vegetable glue or gum, which the boiling process dissolves.” Rutherford says the flax becomes black on being soaked, which may possibly be occasioned by its consequent loss of the gum here described. We find it stated in the “Annual Register” for 1819, that about the beginning of that year a favourable report had been made of the suitableness of the phormium for the manu facture both of small and large ropes, after some experiments in the dockyard at Ports mouth. The ropes turned out strong, pliable, and very silky. The notice adds that the plant may be cut down in New Zealand three times a year; and that it may be imported to this
