ppears to be the most lucrative
and least troublesome of all agricultural enterprises in staple
export produce in the Colony, whilst it is quite independent of the
seasons. The plant is neither affected by disease nor do insects
attack it, and the only ordinary risks appear to be hurricanes,
drought, insufficient weeding, and the ravages of the wild boar.

Planted in virgin soil, each shoot occupies, at first, a space of
20 English square feet. In the course of time, this regularity of
distribution disappears as the original plant is felled and the
suckers come up anywhere, spontaneously, from its root. The plant
requires three years to arrive at cutting maturity, or four years if
raised from the seed; most planters, however, transplant the six-month
suckers, instead of the seed, when forming a new plantation. The stem
should be cut for fibre-drawing at the flowering maturity; in no case
should it be allowed to bear fruit, as the fibre is thereby weakened,
and there is sometimes even a waste of material in the drawing,
as the accumulation of fibre with the sap at the knife is greater.

The average weight of dry fibre extracted from one plant equals
10 ounces, or say 2 per cent, of the total weight of the stem and
petioles; but as in practice there is a certain loss of petioles,
by cutting out of maturity, whilst others are allowed to rot through
negligence, the average output from a carefully-managed estate does
not exceed 3-60 cwt. per acre, or say 4 piculs per caban of land.

The length of the _bast_, ready for manipulation at the knife,
averages in Albay 6 feet 6 inches.

The weight of moisture in the wet fibre, immediately it is drawn
from the bast, averages 56 per cent. To sun-dry the fibre thoroughly,
an exposure of five hours is necessary.

The first petioles forming the outer covering, and the slender central
stem itself around which they cluster, are thrown away. Due to the
inefficient method of fibre-drawing, or rather the want of mechanical
appliances to effect the same, the waste of fibre probably amounts
to as much as 30 per cent. of the whole contained in the bast.

In sugar-cane planting, the poorer the soil is the wider the cane is
planted, whilst the hemp-plant is set out at greater space on virgin
land than on old, worked land, the reason being that the hemp-plant
in rich soil throws out a great number of shoots from the same root,
which require nourishment and serve for replanting. If space were