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Crozet, however, asserts, in his account of Marion's voyage that they found what he calls the cedar of New Zealand to weigh no heavier than the best Riga fir. Nicholas brought some of the seeds of the New Zealand phormium with him to England in 1815; but unfortunately they lost their vegetative properties during the voyage.
On the crumbling, rotten earth the New Zealand flax, the Phormium tenax, loves to grow, and to its long, ribbon-like leaves the eel-fishers fastened their lines securely, baiting each alternate hook with mutton and worms.
We find it stated in the "Annual Register" for 1819, that about the beginning of that year a favourable report had been made of the suitableness of the phormium for the manufacture both of small and large ropes, after some experiments in the dockyard at Portsmouth. The ropes turned out strong, pliable, and very silky.
The mail is going; I will write again by the next. Aspect of Port Lyttelton Ascent of Hill behind it View Christ Church- -Yankeeisms Return to Port Lyttelton and Ship Phormium Tenax Visit to a Farm Moa Bones. January 27, 1860. Oh, the heat! the clear transparent atmosphere, and the dust!
The plant that makes this leaf is so like the ubiquitous New Zealand Phormium tenax, or flax, as it is there called, that I shall speak of it as flax in future, as indeed I have already done without explanation on an earlier page; for this plant grows on both sides of the great range.
"A friend of mine," says our correspondent, "a few years ago imported a quantity of the phormium, in the expectation that it would answer admirably for making cloth even of the finest fabric. But in this he was altogether disappointed.
The distinctive marks which characterise it as not English are the occasional Ti palms, which have a very tropical appearance, and the luxuriance of the Phormium tenax. If you strip a shred of this leaf not thicker than an ordinary piece of string, you will find it hard work to break it, if you succeed in doing so at all without cutting your finger.
The path which led up to the intrenchment, lay across fields of "phormium" and a grove of beautiful trees, the "kai-kateas" with persistent leaves and red berries; "dracaenas australis," the "ti-trees" of the natives, whose crown is a graceful counterpart of the cabbage-palm, and "huious," which are used to give a black dye to cloth.
"Then you shouldn't keep ostriches," retorted Sergeant Archelaus, as he gained the topmost step and, after a fearful glance behind him, sank against a pilaster and mopped his brow. "Take care of that urn!" cried the Lord Proprietor, in a warning voice. "It contains a Phormium tenax that I wouldn't lose on any account." "A what?" "A New Zealand Flax.... The ostriches chased you, did they?"
Valuable, however, as is the phormium for the purposes to which alone it is applied in New Zealand, it would appear that the attempts which have been made to fabricate from it what is properly called cloth have not hitherto been attended with a favourable result.
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