582 ANNUAL RECORD OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 



The pieces desired of the darkest shade should be dyed first. 

 5 C, 1873, X., 80. 



ARTIFICIAL ALIZARINE. 



It is but three years since the German chemists, Graebe 

 and Liebermann, announced that they had succeeded in pro- 

 ducing alizarine the coloring matter of the madder root in 

 the laboratory, a discovery which, though at the time it had 

 very distant possibility of attaining practical importance, 

 was yet hailed by the chemical world as a notcAvorthy tri- 

 umph of science. Since that time great advances, the result 

 of much and laborious experiment, have been made in the 

 direction of giving a practical and commercial value to this 

 important discovery, the consequences of which are to be 

 estimated from the fact that to-day the artificial material 

 can be supplied to the market at prices below those asked for 

 the natural madder. In the city of New York there were 

 recently purchased several tons of the artificial alizarine at a 

 price twenty-five per cent, cheaper than it could be manu- 

 factured from the madder. 



It is said that the rapid growth of the manufacture has al- 

 ready caused distress among the producers of madder in those 

 regions of France and Germany where the cultivation of the 

 madder forms almost the entire means of subsistence of the 

 inhabitants. 



DYEIXG FEATHERS. 



Feathers color almost precisely like silk, but special care 

 must be taken to free them from fatty matter, and also that 

 they retain their form and brilliancy. For this reason, lye 

 or any caustic material can not be employed to remove the 

 grease; but carbonate of ammonia, or at most very diluted 

 solutions of soda, may be used. The feathers must be care- 

 fully laid in the bath, without breaking or bending, and kept 

 in constant motion while drying, after being dyed, so that 

 the down may stand out and the natural form be restored. 

 Black is the most important color, and at the same time the 

 most difiicult to produce. The following processes (each for 

 half a pound of feathers), according to ReimannbS Journal, 

 give most excellent results : 1. Black: Prepare a bath of one 

 pound of calcined carbonate of soda in fifty quarts of water, 



