Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/834

752 eighty pounds. Many of the large, handsome leaves—usually torn to fringes by the trade winds—measure ten feet in length by two



feet in breadth, their uppermost crests waving twenty feet above the ground.

From the fibrous petioles or leaf stalks is manufactured a fine, white flax, which is woven into delicate muslins, or, when in a half-finished state, is used for tinder or wadding; while one variety in the Philippine Islands furnishes the well-known Manilla hemp.

Green bananas are sometimes dried and ground into meal or