all, "from the palanquin-bearer and
husbandman down to the Hindoo widow, saved by the interposition of
England from the funeral pile, but condemned by custom for the residue
of her days literally to sackcloth and ashes." The fine and long-stapled
jute is reserved for the export trade, for which it bears a
comparatively high price; the residue is spun and woven by these classes
as a domestic manufacture; it is made into gunny-cloth, which is
circulated through the globe, forms the bagging for our corn, wheat,
and cotton on their voyage to distant ports, and finally makes its last
appearance as paper.

The long stems of the jute are highly esteemed in India; they resemble
willow wands, are useful for basket-work and fencing, for trellis-work
and the support of vines, and to make a charcoal which is valued for the
manufacture of gunpowder.

The export of jute from India to England for 1859 was sixty thousand
tons. The export of gunny-cloth from India to the United States in the
same year amounted to several millions of pieces.

Why should not this valuable plant be introduced into America? It
requires the same season and soil as our Indian corn, and would
doubtless flourish in the rich alluvial lands of the West, and furnish a
very cheap and useful domestic manufacture for our Western farmers.

The term Linen is doubtless derived from _Linum_, the classic and
botanic name of flax. In Holy Writ, Moses called down the hail upon the
growing flax of Lower Egypt, and Isaiah speaks of those "that work in
fine flax." According to Herodotus, the ancient Egyptians wore linen.
Plutarch informs us that the priests of Isis wore linen on account of
its purity, and mentions a tradition that flax was used for clothing
"because the color of its blossom resembles the ethereal blue which
surrounds the world"; and he adds, that the priests of Isis were buried
in their sacred vestments. An eminent cotton-spinner, who subjected four
hundred specimens of mummy-cloth to the microscope, has ascertained that
they were all linen; and even now, when aspiring cotton has contested
its superiority, and claimed to be more healthful and more beneficial
to the human frame, the choicest drapery of our tables and couches, and
many of our most costly and elegant articles of dress, are fabricated
from flax.

Flax is sown in the spring and harvested in the summer, and requires but
three months for its growth. While cotton grows in hot climates only,
fla