NOTES AND QUERIES
189
Mossman's China, A Brief Account of the Country, its Inhabitants, and their Institutions, published by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, London about 1867 (no date is given on the frontispiece but the contents date it to this period, see e.g. p. 60). It is the first I have come across that provides any detail, though E. Watson's The Principal Articles of Chinese Commerce (Import and Export), published at the Inspectorate-General of Customs, Shanghai 1930, deals with the various types of Hemp and Ramie under the general head of Ma (麻) between pp. 50 - 59.
"Hemp, or, more properly speaking, fibres analogous to those of the plant which we know by that name, are extracted from several indigenous plants in China: these no doubt formed the first textile fabrics worn by the Chinese, as they did of other ancient civilized races. Since the introduction of cotton, however, the cultivation and manufacture of these fibres is limited to the finer sorts, called by the English grass-cloth. This is principally made from a plant belonging to the Urtica, or nettle family, named ma by the Chinese. In cultivating it, great care is taken in the selection of the seeds, and in preparing the soil. The former when gathered are packed in jars with sand or dry earth. A loose dry soil is selected; the ground is well ploughed, manured, and divided into beds, about eight yards long and one wide, whereon the seed is thrown broadcast, and earth is swept over it with a broom. Before it sprouts, a framework with matting is laid over the beds, to protect them from the fierce heat of the sun in June. When three inches high they are transplanted. Being perennial they are carefully tended during the winter and spring; and in the third or fourth year are ready for cutting. The plant is also propagated by roots, and yields three crops annually, the first in June, when the blades are comparatively short; but in a month or two they are seven or eight feet high, when the second cutting takes place. The latest crop is cut in September or October, from which the finest cloth is made; the first being inferior, coarse and hard. On being cut the leaves are soaked in water for an hour, and the fibre stripped by breaking in the middle; whilst the operator, generally a woman or a child, separates the filaments skilfully from one end to the other with the finger-nails. The next process is scraping the hemp with a knife by drawing the strips over the blade from within outwards, taking off all the mucilaginous parts; then it is rolled up into bundles, exposed for a day
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