Eureka Reporter | 1904-10-07 | Page 6 | Javanese Weed of Value

JAVANESE WEED OF VALUE its fibers make the bert kind of mattres known every year amsterdam receives nearly 1 pounds weight of a curl and interesting vegetable known in java and in the trade as kapok it Is a sort ot yellow wadding which nature uses as a covering for the seeds of certain trees in the malac cas its fibers being very ing it has been found impossible to spin or weave it but it gives excel lent results tor bedding making a mattress delightfully soft it it Is ex posed to the sun before being used it Is exceedingly light and buoyant in this respect greatly surpassing cork as it will support in the water thirty alve times its own weight the tree whence it Is derived grows rapidly and in the second year Is twelve to fifteen feet high but it does not fruit abundantly until the fourth year like the cotton plant it bestrews two gifts on man the special wadding mentioned which lines the husk and the oil extracted from the seeds which Is used espell ally in the chinese markets the threads of the soft fiber taken from the pods are light yellow rather alky and only about an inch in length they are made into an inch in length