OUR RESOURCES.

Lyttelton Times, Volume VIII, Issue 498, 12 August 1857, Page 3

OUR RESOURCES.

(Prom the Neio Zealander, June 24.) THE PBEPABATION OF NEW ZEALAND FLAX FOE EXPORT. We have before us an important letter on this subject, addressed to Baron de Thierry, from Sydney, and received by the last mail. The writer is a gentleman who has discovered a method of rendering European or other flax beautifully soft and silky, and fit for all the finest textile manufactures. He was evidently not aware at the time he wrote that a Company was iorming in Auckland for carrying out the Baron's process of manufacturing flax from the green leaf; for he says—" I have had several convevsntions with Mr ; he has shown me your samples, and thinks it feasible to get up a Company, if our two systems were combined, —-yours of extracting the gum, mine of bleaching the fibre ; — to this end, he and I talk of paying you a visit about August." The gentleman to whom the writer alludes was for many years extensively connected with the commerce of Auckland, and his position for wealth and rectitude no one would attempt to question.

The Baron is requested to furnish these inquirers with estimates for the manufacture of thirty tons of gumless flax per week. This quantity agrees, in an important degree, with his own estimates submitted to the shareholders of the Auckland Flax Company, at their late meeting, in which he gives the minimum result of a day's work at three tons. The Company, indeed, even with its present small capital, will be in a position, should it be deemed advantageous, to treat at once with these gentlemen on their arrival from Sydney.

Thus, then, we find two very considerable offers made for the employment of the Baron de Thierry's " ungummed flax;" the offer from certain leading merchants of Paris, to which we sometime back drew attention, and that now held out from Sydney; and the acceptance of these offers would place us in direct communication with two of the greatest manufacturing countries in the world, —England and France. The shares already subscribed to the Auckland Flax Company amount to £1,100, and there are promises to about £200 more, total £1,300:—so that little remains to be done to insure the commencement of an undertaking which bids fair to enable us to avail ourselves pf-4he important advantages we owe to the Baron's discovery of a simple and almost inexpensive method of getting rid of the gum, and thus removing an obstacle which so long closed against us the doors now open for the development of our resources and the production of a valuable export.

The most closely scrutinizing of our men of business allow that the Baron's system is one of the greatest simplicity. Some, however, object that it does not admit of the manufacture of flax at the place of growth. This assertion, we imagine, will be found either correct or incorrect, according to the size of the works. For instance, if six-horse power will make three tons per day, one-horse power will make half-a-ton per day; so that where the necessary power is available, —*(a thrashing machine, or any other power affording mill work, whether steam, wind, water, or animal,) —

flax can be mude cheaply and efficiently in any locality. In a paper read before the Society of Arts in London a few months ago, it was stated that chemists had failed to discover any means of lidding the New Zealand flax of its gum-resin. The Baron gets rid of that refractory substance by the scientificapplication of water alone, —without any chemical admixture. - This simple but useful discovery seems to us to give to our native flax a value it had not before, and raises the fibre to a rank among manufacturing substances from which it seemed destined *to be debarred by the previous ineffectual attempts made to render it gumless.

We have much pleasure, in conclusion, in stating that the share list of the projected Auckland Flax Company contains the names of Members of the General and Provincial Governments,—of our leading merchants and professional men, —and of representatives of both political parties. This unanimity of action is very gratifying to ourselves, bearing out as it does the favourable opinion we have always expressed of the value of the Baron's ingenious and practical invention, of which we hope soon to be able to report that it is in actual and vigorous operation.