100 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERT. 



substance under the form of a thin pellicle. When by decoction and 

 the use, of certain chemical agents the resinous substance is dissolved, 

 it is easy to separate the fibres, to wash them and free them from all 

 foreign substances. According to the mode of preparation employed, 

 the woolly substance acquires a quality more or less fine, or remains 

 in its coarse state ; in the first instance it is used as wadding, in the 

 second to stuff mattresses. If the pine has been preferred to the other 

 kinds of pitch trees, it is on account of the length of its needle-shaped 

 leaves. It is thought that a similar result might be obtained from other 

 trees of the same species. The tree can be stripped of its leaves when 

 quite young -without any injury. The operation takes place when 

 they are still green. A man can gather two hundred pounds of leaves 

 a day. It was first advantageously substituted for cotton and wool in 

 the manufacture of blankets. The hospital of Vienna bought five 

 hundred, and, after a trial of several years, has adopted them entirely. 

 It has been remarked, among other advantages, that no kind of insects 

 would lodge in the beds, and its aromatic odor was found agreeable 

 and beneficial. These blankets have since been adopted by the 

 penitentiary of Vienna, the charity hospital of Berlin, the maternity 

 hospital, and the barracks of Breslau. Its cost is three times less than 

 that of horsehair, and the most experienced upholsterer, when the 

 wool is employed in furniture, could not tell the one from the other. 

 This article can be spun and woven, resembling the thread of hemp 

 for its strength ; it can be made into rugs and horse-blankets. 



In the preparation of this wool an ethereal oil of a pleasant odor is 

 produced. This oil is at first green ; 'exposed to the rays of the sun, 

 it assumes an orange yellow tint ; replaced in the shade, it resumes its 

 former green color; rectified, it becomes colorless. It differs from 

 the essence of turpentine extracted from the same tree. It has been 

 found efficient in rheumatism and gout ; also as an anthelmintic, and 

 in certain cutaneous diseases. Distilled, it is used in the preparation 

 of lac of the finest kind. It burns in lamps like olive oil, and dissolves 

 caoutchouc completely in a short time. Perfumers in Paris use it in 

 large quantities. It is the liquid left by the decoction of the pine 

 leaves which has been so beneficial in the form of bath. The bath 

 establishment is a flourishing one. The membranous substance, ob- 

 tained by filtration at the time of the washing of the fibres, is pressed 

 in bricks and dried ; it is used as a combustible, and produces, from 

 the rosin it contains, a quantity of gas sufficient for the lighting of the 

 factory. The production of a thousand quintals of wool leaves a 

 quantity of combustible matter equal in value to sixty cubic metres of 

 pine wood. 



Experiments made in the United States since the publication of the 

 above process, have entirely failed in producing any practical result, 

 and we have little faith in the value of the scheme. Editor. 



