The price paid by France for paina fibre is about one hundred and forty to one hundred and sixty francs per hundred kilos of good-grade material: she imposes no duties against its entry. Brazil has many good fibres, but their extensive industrial use is as yet limited to _aramina_, of which coffee bags are made in S. Paulo, a flourishing industry, and the _pita_ which is used by the Indians of Amazonas to make hammocks. These are woven with great art, interspersed along the edges with delicate feathers of gay-coloured Amazonian birds. Fibre production in a scientific manner and on a commercial scale is only in its infancy in Brazil, but has recently shown interesting development. There are numbers of fine fibres native to the country, yielded not only by a large number of palms, one of which supplies the _piassava_ exported for broom-making, but also by many plants of the aloe tribe. Some of these produce fibres equal in commercial value to the famous _henequen_ (sisal) of Yucatan, upon which the rope-making industries of the United States so largely depend. Banana fibre is used by the lace-makers of the north for the production of a curious, stiff, shiny lace of fairly intricate workmanship. The best specimens which I possess of this lace were bought at Maceió, but the great home of the lacemaker is Ceará. She usually works with linen or cotton threads, and is to be seen at every cottage door, with her pillow bristling like those of the Devonshire lace-makers, with scores of pins, while she throws the myriad bobbins to and fro, working her pattern on the pins. Some of the lace produced is quite beautiful, of extreme fineness and intricacy, some of the most prized being the _labyrintho_, with its darned-in pattern of heavier, silky thread, among the fine filaments of the background. Lace-making is one of the small industries of Brazil which are little known, but deserve a better market. CACAO