116 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERT, 



boiled for the space of one or two hours. This boiler or vessel is furnished 

 with partition or diaphram, finely perforated, or composed of gauze or 

 similar material, through which the water may be drained off from, the 

 fibre or other material, and carried away through a discharge-pipe, which 

 is brought into connection with the lower surface of the boiler or vessel. 

 After this process, the fibre or other material is to be immersed in lime- 

 water, in the proportion of about 1 cwt. of lime-water to every cwt. of 

 material, and to remain so immersed for the space of about twenty-four 

 hours, the mixture being occasionally stirred. After the expiration of 

 this time, the lime-water is to be drained off, and a fresh solution poured 

 on, which is again drained off as before. "When, this operation "has been 

 continued during about three days, the fibre or other material is to be 

 placed in water, to which alkali has been added, in the proportion of about 

 10 pounds of alkali to every 1 cwt. of water, and boiled for the space of 

 two or three hours ; the alkaline solution is then drained off in the man- 

 ner before described. After the fibre of the material has been thus treated, 

 it is washed and bleached in the same manner as when bleaching rags ; 

 that is to say, by running it into tanks or vessels, with a quantity of 

 chlorine or bleaching powder sufficient to bleach it to that degree of 

 whiteness which is required for the quality of paper to be made. After 

 being thus bleached, the straw, or other fibre or material, may be washed 

 and beaten, and reduced to pulp or half stuff, in the usual manner ; and 

 the pulp or half stuff may be converted into such paper as shall be re- 

 quired by the process heretofore in use. 



The patentee claims the substitution of lime-water for other alkaline 

 solutions heretofore employed in the maceration of straw, grass, or other 

 vegetable fibre, or gunny bagging, or hemp bagging, used to form the 

 pulp or half stuff, in the manufacture of such descriptions of paper as are 

 produced from the aforesaid materials. Newton's London Journal. 



Manufacture of Paper from Coiv-dnng. The following communication, 

 by Dr. Lloyd, of England, is published in the Journal of the Society of 

 Arts : 



Attracted to the subject of paper-making by an accidental circumstance, 

 and aware of the very great variety of vegetable substances that have, 

 from time to time, been proposed to be so 'employed, and of those which 

 are actually in use, wholly or in part, as substitutes for the costly, " filthy 

 rags," I was induced to make trial of the fibre derived from some of our 

 common grasses, lleflecting, too, upon the condition of the fibre of the 

 flax plant -having undergone all the destructive chances and changes, 

 during a course from the living plant to the almost decayed fragment of 

 rag, and contemplating the wonderful tenacity and endurance of the fibre 

 in resisting the destructive agency of all the repeated mechanical and 

 chemical operations to which it is subjected up to the period of its be- 

 coming fair linen cloth, and afterwards, through the incessant action of 

 wear, and the no less destructive operations of the laundress, and the 

 transition through the rag-bag to its committal to the paper-mill, in which 



