Flax and Tow Bonuses.

Opunake Times, Volume I, Issue 39, 13 November 1894, Page 4

Flax and Tow Bonuses.

Mes-rs' Gardner, Rutherford, and Vlowalt. flax experts, and members of the Industrial Committee of the House . of Representatives, paid a visit to Blenheim, says the Marlborough Express, for the purpose of investigating the different applications for the bonuses, recently offered by Government, for the treatment of flax and sow. The amount of the flax bonus, it may be stated, is £1,500, and that of the tow bonus £SOO. After visiting Mr W. Fairvveathcr, who . has made an application for the flax bonus, aud Mr Tin dill, who has entered for the tow bonus, the experts waited on Mr D. H. Pattie in reference to an application which that gentleman made a week ago, and to which ho has not yet received an answer. Mr Puttie’s process is intended to produce an article quite different to that turned out by the present process. The idea is to avoid the hea’iog aud scraping of the present process, for this treatment of flax he regards as injurious to the fibre, aud substitute pressure, which, while producing a better class of fibre, does not require half the present cost. It is ’’claimed that in this process there will be no refuse m the form of tow, while no bleaching or fielding will be required. .At the same time the operation is purely of a botanical not a chemical nature.