SPEAR GRASS.
Dr. A Taylor, Secretary of the Royal Botanic Society of Edinburgh, , t has been experimenting with the New Zealand spear grass (aciphylla squarara and A. bolensia) and find that the leaves yield a valuable description of fibre that would be especially useful for paper making ; also a resin similar to kauri gum, and n valuable essential oil. He suggests that the plants, which are considered by the settlers on the higher runs in Otago and Canterbury not only as useless, but a nuisance, might be profitably cultivated with a view of extracting these products. He has also had samples of bituminous shale found in Blueskin in Otago under investigation, and finds that it has some peculiar properties, not yielding any of the coal tar series, but affording a naptha that would be useful for dissolving resins in the manufacture of varnishes.
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Bibliographic details
Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume III, Issue 287, 14 August 1882, Page 4
Word Count
143SPEAR GRASS. Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume III, Issue 287, 14 August 1882, Page 4
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