108 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



England, with 28,000,000 inhabitants, requires yearly 90,000 tons of 

 rags, 15,000 of which are imported. 



The consumption of paper in the United States is said to be that of 

 England and France added together. There are used here 6,000 tons of 

 straw for wrapping paper and paste boards, and during the last few years 

 the importation, of rags has averaged 10,000 tons. In 1850, Italy sent to 

 this country 5,000 tons, and in 1853 only 2,000, this deficiency being 

 compensated by importation from new places, such as Russia, Chili, and 

 Peru. 



The above clearly shows that industrious or rich nations require more 

 paper than they can make with their own rags, and that the deficiency of 

 home supply is made up by purchase from their less advanced neighbors. 

 But progress is going on every where very rapidly, and every where, as it 

 seems to be the case with Italy, the exportation will go on diminishing. 



Many attempts have been made to furnish new raw materials for paper, 

 but hitherto with only partial success. The failure generally results from 

 one or more of three causes, (a.) Some fibres require so much cost to bring 

 them to the state in which they are oifered to paper makers, in the form 

 of rags or cotton waste, that in point of economy they cannot enter into 

 competition with the latter, (b.) Certain fibres lose so much weight in 

 bringing them to this state, that they cease to be economical, (c.) Certain 

 fibres, which are well adapted on account of their texture for the paper 

 trade, present so many difficulties in bleaching them as to render them 

 unfit for white paper. 



In the United States, if new materials are to be introduced for the manu- 

 facture of paper, the difficulties to be overcome are for the most part chemi- 

 cal, and not mechanical, in their nature. The mechanical departments of the 

 manufacture of paper have attained to an astonishing degree of perfection, 

 until the whole process, from the time when the boiled rags enter the 

 engines until they are reproduced as paper, is almost automatic. But the 

 chemistry of the operation, the cleaning, the boiling, the sizing, and the 

 bleaching, are yet rude and imperfect. And what is true of paper-making, 

 is true of almost every other branch of manufacturing in this country. 

 The departments in which progress has been made are mechanical, and it 

 is only here that a high degree of perfection has been attained to. And 

 this result is a natural one; our mills and our workshops are filled and 

 surrounded with an intelligent population, trained by example from their 

 youth up, and continually stimulated to invent. Their mechanical educa- 

 tion, acquired almost instinctively, makes them ready to perceive and appre- 

 ciate mechanical principles, and their minds and energies are constantly 

 directed towards the economization. of power, to the application of force by 

 new methods and for new purposes, or for the improving and perfecting 

 of old plans and arrangements. But with chemistry it is altogether clirTer- 

 ent. Its principles cannot be acquired by observation, but only by long 

 study and practical working. The science itself is regarded by many as a 

 collection of unsystematized facts, and to some extent this is undoubtedly 



