Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 March 1890 — Natural Materials. [ARTICLE]

Natural Materials.

Imagine the luxury of such a tree, and the delights of going out to your needle-and-thread orchard and picking a needle threaded and all ready for business. Odd as it may seem to us, there is on the Mexican plains just such a forest growth. The tree partakes of the nature of a gigantic asparagus, and has large, thick, fleshy leaves, reminding one of the cactus, the one populHr'v known as the “prickly pear." The needles” of the needle-and-thread-lr e are set along the edges of these thick leaves. In order to get one equipped for sewing, it is only necessary to pusn the thorn or “needle” gently backw. rd into its fleshy sheath, this to loosen it from the tough outside covering of the leaf, and then pull it from the socket. A hundred fine fibers adhere to the thorn-like spider webs. By twisting the "needle” daring the drawing operation this fiber can be drawn out to an almost iudefinite length. The action of the atmosphere toughens these minute threads amazingly, to such a degree as to make a thread twisted from it not larger than common No. 40 capable of sustaining a weight of five ponnds, about three times the tensile strength of common “six-cord” thread. The scientific name of th s forest wonder is tensyana mucadina.— St. Louis Republic.