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26 THE LEAF-riBKE OF KEW ZEALAND FLAX.
fibre and its utilization in New Zealand itself have been legion. Pa-
tents innumerable have been taken out; money has been expended by
thousands of pounds.' Nevertheless, no award of any of these attrac-
tive p^'emiums has yet been made! None of the host of experiments
made, whether on the large or small scale, has yet come up, as respects
market success, to the stipulated standard. The history offlax-experi-
ments in New Zealand is the history of a series of humiliating failures.
The colonist is forced to confess that he has notyet equalled nor im-
proved upon the results obtained by the Maoris by mere hand-labour
and processes of the most primitive kind. He has neither produced a
finer fibre, nor has he succeeded in dyeing it with more brilliant or
faster colours. Superior processes of preparation have yet apparently
to be devised ; while too little attention has hitherto been given to the
at least equally important subject of the cultivation of the plant, with
a view to its yielding the best kinds of fibre. Hitherto the colonists'
operations have been conducted almost exclusively on the wild plant
though, as has been ab'eady shown, the Maoris have long recognized
the superior value of the produce of the cultivated plant. There is,
however, this other equally cogent reason for cultivation, if it be
proved that the produce is of sufficient value to warrant the necessary
expenditure of capital : the native Flax-plant is rapidly disappearing
before advancing settlement and agriculture, with their concomitant,
the development of an immigrant flora. Hence the fibre-supply must,
at no distant date, if the demand grow at all larger, depend on
the extent to which the plant is cultivated. The great anxiety of
the settlers to utilize the fibre has arisen in connection with the ap-
parent enormous waste of available material in the eradication of the
y lax- plant from the soil, as a basis for agricultural operations, and its
subsequent destruction by fire. But enough has been said, especially
on the comparative advantages of using the cultivated plant, to lessen
materially our regret that so much seemingly valuable fibre-stuft" has
been virtually squandered or neglected.
The recent Mew Zealand iixhibition at Dunedin, in 1865, appears
to have assisted materially in revivifying, after such a series of dis-
lieartening failures, the interest of the colonists in the preparation
and utilization of New Zealand flax. The Exhibition in question con-
tained several most instructive suites of specimens illustrative of the pro-
ducts of Vhormium tenax, and their economic ap])lications. Of these.
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