A Fabric Not Likely to Regain Popularity Excellent examples of workers in bark-cloth or "tapa" are among the interesting specimens of such work on view at the Museum of Natural History. In many localities throughout the tropics of both hemispheres crude civilizations, lacking both the knowledge and means of weaving, have fashioned cloth from the inner bark of certain trees. The Micronesian. Polynesian and Melanesian Islands and Africa were all tapamaking countries. The Maoris of New Zealand, too, knew the art. But with them it was only briefly cultivated, due to the scarcity of trees producing the sort of bark needed and the more severe climate, which soon led to the use of the strong - native flax for the manufacture of cloth.
As to the cloth itself, the finer varieties resemble fine cotton in softness, are frail and easily torn-and very cool. In Samoa and Tonga Islands the cloth was glazed with a sort of varnish which rendeved it rainproof.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.