wns are important industries.

While they are not, strictly speaking, mats, plaited sacks [3] are
woven in the same weave and bear the same relation to sugar and rice as
do mats to tobacco and abaca. Most of the domestic rice crop entering
into commerce is packed in buri sacks and practically all the export
sugar is sent away in them. A few bayones are made of pandan. The
production of bayones is an important industry in certain districts.

Mats are also employed throughout the provinces for drying paddy
and copra in the sun, in the same manner in which trays are used for
sun-curing fruit in temperate regions.

The use of the finer grades of petates for floor mats and for
wall decoration is confined to the foreign population in the
Philippines. Nevertheless, a considerable number is so utilized. For
this trade only mats of the better grades are demanded, and the number
sold for the purpose is probably considerably restricted by the fact
that few mats are of suitable color combination and of proper design
to satisfy foreign taste. As yet there is no known commercial export
of Philippine mats. There is a considerable demand for floor mats and
mats for wall decoration in Europe and in the United States, but it
is improbable that the Philippines can hope to supply any part of it
unless designs and color combinations are vastly improved. Floor mats
are used as rugs in the same manner as are the strips of Japanese
matting which are so popular all over the world. Round floor mats,
somewhat larger in diameter than the round table tops, are also in
demand. Small mats can be used as doilies on the table or under the
stands of flower pots and the like.

Sleeping mats and mats intended for floors, walls, stands, and mat
doilies are the ones which are suitable for domestic and foreign
commerce, and industrial education must interest itself in them. The
Philippine materials available for weaving these mats are varied and
well distributed. With improvement in color combination and design,
there should be a large increase in the industry.

BLEACHING AGENTS.

Sunshine is used to bleach all mat straws, but more often they are
also treated with boiling water to which certain bleaching agents
have been added. Only the most important of these are explained.

Tamarind.--This tree (Tamarindus indica) is known in Tagalog,
Bicol and Pampanga as sampalok, in Visayan as sambag, in Ilocano
as salamagui, and in Palawan as kalampis