Abstract
THE utilisation of waste materials for paper-making is a subject upon which a great deal has been said and still remains to be said and done. In every country waste vegetable matter which contains fibre in anything like suitable proportions is sure to attract much attention. The subject has been handled in various works, directly or indirectly, in this country as well as on the Continent; and with regard to Australian plants suitable for paper-making, Baron Mueller, of Melbourne, issued a lengthy treatise in connection with a series of specimens of paper actually made from the plants enumerated and exhibited in the Paris Exhibition of 1867. We have now before us a paper by Mr. T. Kirk, F.L.S., of Wellington, on some indigenous materials of New Zealand suitable for the manufacture of paper. The plants enumerated occur in great abundance in different parts of the colony, and, it is said, are being yearly destroyed to an enormous extent by the progress of settlement. Most of the plants alluded to in this paper belong to the endogenous group, Liliaceæ and Cyperaceæ being the chief natural orders. In the genus Astelia a group of small tufted sedge-like plants belonging to the first-named order, five species of which are described as occurring in New Zealand, four are recommended, both on account of the quantity of fibre contained in their leaves, as well as for the abundance with which the plants grow. A. Solandri, the Tree-flax of the colonists, is a plant with numerous radical leaves, from one to two feet long, thickly clothed at the base with shaggy silky hairs, and containing a quantity of good fibre. It is abundant on lofty trees and rocks throughout the colony, resembling in the distance the nest of some large bird. “Hundreds of tons” of this plant, it is said, “are destroyed on every acre of forest-land cleared in the North Island.”
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JACKSON, J. New Zealand Plants Suitable for Paper-Making . Nature 11, 212–213 (1875). https://doi.org/10.1038/011212a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/011212a0