Melbourne Botanic & Zoological Garden,
22. Oct. 1860.
Sir —
I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter, dated 15th Oct., accompanied by a copy of a despatch from the Undersecretary of State for the colonies, desiring information on such plants, yielding textile fibre as are indigenous to the colony of Victoria and are likely to supply a want of raw material for British manufactures.1
Whilst in compliance with his Excellencys the Governor's request, I beg to submit such information as I possess on indigenous vegetable fibres, I regret that I cannot point to any native plant extensively available for the desired purpose, or holding out the prospect of successful introduction into British manufactures.
But it appears to me, that the two varieties of New Zealand flax (Phormium tenax, Forster) are deserving of especial attention, as likely to supply the wanting material to British Weavers, the strength of the Phormium-fibre being almost equal to that of silk, and little doubt being entertained, that finally the genius of invention will overcome the hitherto experienced difficulty of separating by an easy method without sacrifice of the material's strength, the fibre from the leaves.
I beg further to draw attention to the extreme facility, with which this plant might be reared on places not available for any other cultivation, (such as margins of swamps, periodically inundated banks of lakes &c.); further, to its great vigor of growth, to the probability of its proving quite hardy in the southern parts of England and Ireland and to the certainty of its cultivation being attended with full success in South Europe and therefore in proximity to the British market and under the advantage of cheap labor.
Specimens for experiment on this promising and moreover highly ornamental plant will be readily available in Europe, where the plant has been introduced already, in the beginning of the year 1788.
The fibre of the less prolific Doryanthes excelsa or Giant Lily of New South Wales, greatly resembles that of the Phormium.
The fibre of various of our native plants is employed by the aborigines for making their nets and fishing lines and indiscriminately called by them "Curryong." Still it remains yet a subject of inquiry, whether the products of these plants can be brought in qualitative competition with other textile fibres hitherto drawn into universal use, admitted even that the respective plants could be found all in sufficient abundance or cultivated with a prospect of remunerative yield.
The Pimelea axiflora F. Mueller, was recently observed in great frequency near Twofold Bay,2 whence it extends to Port Phillip, and I shall have no difficulty therefore to obtain of its tough bark and of that of the allied Pimelea ligustrina, pauciflora and mirocephala samples of bark, all four species being of tall growth, and hence of large yield of fibre.
Sida pulchella Bonpland, Brachychiton populneum Rob. Brown, and Commersonia Fraseri Gay are the other native plants, known to be principally employed by the aborigines for obtaining cordage. Considerable quantity of the bark of the former might be gathered in the forests of this colony and of Tasmania; the two other species have but their scattered outposts on the eastern frontiers of Gipps Land, the mainbody of plants extending through New South Wales and Queensland.
We possess in Victoria a few species of asclepiadeous plants, which yield a kind of cotton, similar to that once by the ancients spun into ropes, as microscopically demonstrated from Pompeiian relics. But since allied European Asclepiadeae seem no longer employed in the older countries, it is not likely that we will derive advantages of those of these states.
A perennial flax (Linum marginale, All. Cunningham) is by no means rare in this colony; but it is not likely to possess any advantages over the common flax, should indeed, it bear with the European cultivated one comparison.
The Tasmanian Stringybark tree, which, as I anticipated, has been by comparison with original specimens in Sir Joseph Banks's herbarium, identified by Mr. Rich. Kippist with the original Eucalyptus obliqua of L'Heritier (having been collected during Cook's third voyage at Adventure Bay,3 by David Nelson,)— yields, as well as an allied species, which bears amongst the Colonists the name of "Mountain Ash" a certainly fibrous still not tenacious bark, therefore not available for textile fibre altho' perhaps for the manufacture of a coarse paper; otherwise their bark, which moreover is so readily separable, might be obtained in the utmost profusion.
I have the honor to be,
Sir,
your most obedient servant.
Ferd. Mueller,
Government Botanist.
To Capt. Timins,
Private Secretary to His Excellency
Sir Henry Barkly, K. C. B., &c., &c., &c.4
Asclepiadeæ
Brachychiton populneum
Commersonia Fraseri
Doryanthes excelsa
Eucalyptus obliqua
Linum marginale
Phormium tenax
Pimelea axiflora
Pimelea ligustrina
Pimelea mirocephala
Pimelea pauciflora
Sida pulchella
On 17 October 1860, Timins also wrote to J. Macadam, Honorary Secretary of the Royal Society of Victoria, forwarding a copy of a despatch from the Imperial Government (apparently the same as had been sent with O. Timins to M, 15 October 1860).
The despatch, dated 3 August 1860, seeking to discover 'the existence (if any) of some fibrous product in the Australian Continent which might tend to remove the difficulty [shortage of raw materials for the production of textile fabrics in Great Britain], and at the same time prove a sufficiently valuable article of commerce to ensure its being successfully and profitably cultivated', was read at a meeting of the Royal Society on 29 October 1860. Governor Barkly, who chaired the meeting, stated that ‘he had already received a very valuable report from Dr Mueller, the Government Botanist, on the subject of the fibrous productions of the Colony. He had no doubt Dr Mueller would be happy to lay a copy before the Society.' See Transactions of the Royal Society of Victoria, vol. 5 (1861), p. xxi. A copy of the despatch from the Colonial Office is printed as part of the Committee's report, p. xli.
At a meeting of the Society on 19 November, it was agreed that in reponse to the Imperial Government's depatch a committee be appointed 'to inquire into the grasses of the colony'. The Committee was to consist of M, Thomas Ralph, William Lockhart Morton and John Bleasdale. The Committee's report, which consisted of M's letter on fibrous productions and a postscript on grasses, was laid on the table at the adjourned annual general meeting of the Society, 22 December 1860. After a short discussion it was adopted.
Enclosure B to the Despatch was an 'Abstract of a paper read before the Royal Society of Victoria Decr. 6th 1860' by Francis A. Corbett , ff.121-2. There is no record of a meeting of the Society on 6 December 1860, but the minutes of the meeting of 17 December state that Corbett 'exhibited some specimens of a fibrous plant, a species of mallow, which grows in great abundance on the Darling ; he also showed some paper manufactured from the fibre. He likewise exhibited specimens of a fibrous rush, a paper from which had also been manufactured, and read a short paper on the subject’ (see Transactions of the Royal Society of Victoria, vol. 5 (1861), p. xxiv).
A copy of the despatch was sent on 8 April 1861 to the Secretary of the General Association for the Australian Colonies, a deputation from which had waited upon the Duke of Newcastle at the Colonial Office on 5 June 1860 ( Morning post [London], 6 June 1860, p. 4), after which the Colonial Office despatch of 3 August (see n. 2 above) had been prepared.
Please cite as “FVM-60-10-22,” in Correspondence of Ferdinand von Mueller, edited by R.W. Home, Thomas A. Darragh, A.M. Lucas, Sara Maroske, D.M. Sinkora†, J.H. Voigt† and Monika Wells accessed on 1 May 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/60-10-22