NEW ZEALAND FLAX.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 7, Issue 370, 23 April 1866, Page 2

NEW ZEALAND FLAX.

(From the New Zealand Herald, 7th April.) The discovery of a process by which the Phormium tenax, or New Zealand flax, may be cleansed of the gummy substance which has hitherto alone stood in the way of its competion with European flax, cannot be over-rated in the important results which it may bring to this and other Provinces in New Zealand. A short time since the public were made aware that amongst those w r ho professed to have discovered this long-sought process was Mr Finlay M'Millan, now of Tauranga, an old and well-known settler. Mr M'Millan has divulged his secret to his Honor the Superintendent for the public benefit. It is a very simple process, but it frequently happens that the solutions to most difficult problems are, when made known, found to be so simple that everyone wonders they have not been discovered long before. The flax is, it appears, boiled in a preparation of cow-dung and water, after which process the gummy portion of the stalk at once parts from the fibre which is ready for dressing to the required degree of finenness. So simple a process as this is within the reach of every man in whose neighborhood the flax grows or can be grown, and thus the preparation of flax as an export may be* come a regular operation of industry on almost every farm in the Province, enriching the European population individually, and the country collectively by the establishment of a large and paying export. The making known this discovery at the present time is most opportune. There may be but little truth in the forcible word pictures which have been presented of late to the Auckland public, of alleged distress in the Waikato districts, amongst the military settlers, hut it is certain that the placing such an opportunity of working up raw material, growing at their very doors, into a valuable marketable commodity, will do much to enable them to settle more comfortably and successfully on their lands than they could otherwise have done. At Opotiki, too we have half-a-milliou of acres of splendid laud the greater portion of which is covered

with the native flax. Who can doubt but that the settlement of this land will be greatly facilitated by the means thus placed in the hands of those who may settle upon it. To return, however, to the more immediate subject—the process of Mr M'Millan. It will of course be evident to any one acquainted with the merest rudiments of chemistry that if a solution of cow-dung has the effect stated upon the flax, that effect is owing to some one or more of the component parts of the cow-dung. These in other and more convenient forms can of course be supplied in quantity, and therefore to give full value to the discovery, it remains to be tested what quality or qualities combined which may be found in cow-dung is the substance that has the effect upon the flax.