The plants are grown principally on the eastern slopes of the volcanic mountains of Southern Luzon, and the adjacent islands where the soil is soft and friable and roads are unknown.
The heavy stems of the plants cannot profitably be conveyed to fixed works for treatment, and no machine has yet been devised light enough to be carried up to the látes or plantations and able to compete with hand labour. In a recent report to the British North Borneo Company, Mr. W. C. Cowie mentions his hopes that Thompson’s Fibre Company are about to send out a trial decorticator, with engine and boiler to drive it, to the River Padas, in that company’s territories, for cleaning the fibre of the numerous plants of the Musa textilis growing in that region. It will be interesting to learn the result. Possibly the conditions of transport by rail or river are more favourable than in the Philippines, and in that case a measure of success is quite possible. But few errors are more expensive than to unwarrantably assume that machinery must necessarily be cheaper than hand labour.
Vicols Preparing Hemp.
Cutting the Plant.
Adjusting under the Knife.
Separating the Petioles.
To face p. 287.