Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 November 1891 — Substitute for Steel. [ARTICLE]

Substitute for Steel.

An odd cargo of African vegetable fiber, tough as steel itself, is being landed at Hanover street wharf from the Italian bark Nuova Hondo. The vessel brought 2,236 bales of it from Oran, an Algerian seaport in the Mediterranean Sea. The fiber has been found to be so elastic that it can be used as a substitute for springs and the like in the manufacture of furniture backs and seats. It is so expansive and so easily affected by higher temperature in its dry state that the bales are held in place by bands Of heavy steel. The peculiarity of the grass is that it thrives only around the volcanic mountain slopes of Oran, and flourishes up to within a short distance of the craters themselves. The latter are always in a semi-active state, and the earth around is so warm that not a plant of any kind can thrive or is ever seen to grow except this steel-like plant. When dry and flattened out it will pierce a body like an arrow.—Philadelphia Record.