“PASSING MAORI MEMORIES.”

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 454, 23 June 1937, Page 3

“PASSING MAORI MEMORIES.”

RECORDED BY J.H.S. FOR “THE TARANAKI CENTRAL PRESS.”

The pressing need for exports was made apparent by the depression of 1856-58, and England's war with Russia revived the interest in the then celebrated New Zealand flux plant, the fibre of which was almost exclusively produced by the Maori process of scoring the green leaf across one side with a sharp pipi shell, turning the leaf against the thigh, and scraping the green pulp off by sharply drawing it against .the edge of the shell. Papeka boys soon became experts, but they used a “Pampa?” pocket knife, instead of a shell. The muka (fibre) had but one local market, that of making “crackers" for stock whips and bullock whips. To this day no machine has produced such fine silky white fibre. A ton of this hand dressed muka f-o export was worth £4O to ’he merchants, who usually gave ten pounds tor it.

of living, instead of being determined by the value of the product, a principle invariably recognised in fixing the royalty on ;the green leaf each month. Maori experts told us there were ten varieties., each celebrated in making different kinds of mats.; but in 1859 it was supposed by our scientists, and possibly to-day, that there k. but one species and two varieties, one having a yellow bloom and the other a dark red. The yellow flowered one in Manawatu being superoar to larger reddish flowered variety in the Bay of Islands. The other eight are due to changes in soil and moisture. One thing is certain we musit cultivate, /and select the plants.- and the soil, as well as stabilize the supply if we are to enjoy a steady demand. Hopes are now centered on our new woolpack factory and the prospect of cellulose extract. It is worthy of note that in 1856 a Government reward of £4OOO was.< offered for a process of extracting flax gum. It might well be increased to £lO,OOO.

Before the dawn of the nineteenth century our flax was grown and tried out by experts in Ireland, France, and Australia. In 1931 a factory was established in York, to convert it into cloth “of greater durability and finer texture than wool or cotton,” but failed, so it was stated, for the want of steady supplies. All attempts l to extract the gum without injuring the fibre were also unsuccessful. At that remote period Professor Dindley gave the relative strength of fibres- as—silk 34, N.Z. Muka 23, European hemp 16, European flax 11. Russ.Lan flax .and other, fibres rose in priqe; hut the New Zealand product fell to one half in quantity and values. From 30 years personal experience in what is still the largest flax -property in New Zealand, I know the cause of its- failure to- be our legislation, by which, on a falling market, wages are based on the illusory cost

What’s this? Nearly 50 per cent of smokers in the Old Country being slowly poisoned by nicotine? That’s what a Harley Street specialist says anyhow, and if it’s true of England it’s true of other parts of the world because tobacco loaded with nicotine is found everywhere although there is far less evidence of it in New Zealand than in other countries for most smokers here now-a-days smoke “Toasted” which, grown and manufactured within the Dominion, contains less nicotine than any other tobacco in the world for the simple reason that the manufacturers’ own toasting process-—the only one, remember —so neutralises the nicotine in the leaf that most of it vanishes. There’s no ‘bite” left in it. Does toasting do anything more than purify? Most assuredly it does! The peculiarly delicious bouquet of these blends as well’ as their unforgettable flavour are largely due to toasting. Hence the ever increasing demand for Cut Plug No. 10 Bull’shead), Navy Cut No. 3 (Bulldog), Cavendish, Riverhead Gold and Desert Gold. There are no tobaccos in the very least like them.