"Kapok" Quotes from Famous Books
... hairs; that is fibres that are attached to the seeds of many plants, such, for instance, as the common thistle and dandelion; the cotton fibre belongs to this group of seed hairs, while there are others, kapok, etc., that have been tried from time to time in spinning and weaving, but without much success. These seed hairs vary much in length, from 1/4 inch to 1-1/2 inches or even 2 inches; each fibre consists of a single unit. Whether it is serviceable as a textile fibre depends upon its ... — The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech
... African cock-o-veet, they have one answering love-song between them; the male sounding two or three notes and the female completing it with two or three more), but they build the nest together and rear the young with an equal devotion. In the case of the little kapok bird of the Cape, a beautiful, white, fluffy round nest is made by both out of the white down of a certain plant, and immediately below the entrance to the cavity in which the little female sits on the eggs is a small ... — Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... Chinese agriculture: cotton. It is often forgotten that, from very early times, the Chinese in the south had used kapok and similar fibres, and that the cocoons of different kinds of worms had been used for silk. Real cotton probably came from Bengal over South-East Asia first to the coastal provinces of China and spread quickly into Fukien and ... — A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard |