Jute also is a bast fibre. The finer qualities of it look like
flax, but, as we shall see, it is not chemically identical with cotton,
as linen or flax is. Another vegetable fibre, termed "cotton-silk," from
its beautiful, lustrous, silky appearance, has excited some attention,
because it grows freely in the German colony called the Camaroons, and
also on the Gold Coast. This fibre, under the microscope, differs
entirely in appearance from both cotton and flax fibres. Its fibres
resemble straight and thin, smooth, transparent, almost glassy tubes,
with large axial bores; in fact, if wetted in water you can see the
water and air bubbles in the tubes under the microscope. A more detailed
account of "cotton-silk" appears in a paper read by me before the
Society of Chemical Industry in 1886 (see _J.S.C.I._, 1886, vol. v. p.
642). Now the substance of the cotton, linen or flax, as well as that of
the cotton-silk fibres, is termed, chemically, cellulose. Raw cotton
consists of cellulose with about 5 per cent. of impurities.
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