M. TECHNOLOGY. 613 



thicken it. 3.. The oil that has been bleached by sunlight 

 has a decided acid reaction, and a slight rancid odor and 

 taste, and dissolves the aniline red easily whereby it is itself 

 intensely colored, a principle that is of importance only when 

 we would test the purity of the oil by the method proposed 

 by Jacobsen. 1 C, 1873, 176. 



EXTEACTIOX OF AVOOL FKOM HALF-WOOL EAGS, ETC. 



According to Dr. Wagner, the present method of removing 

 cotton and linen from half-wool material by means of sulphu- 

 ric acid of five per cent, is not as cheap, effective, or quick as 

 is desirable; and his investigations show that a complete de- 

 struction of the linen fibre combined with wool requires sul- 

 phuric acid of eight to ten per cent., as well as prolonged 

 boiling, and even with the utmost care, too, the avooI fibre will 

 be somewhat affected. A comparatively large quantity of liq- 

 uid is required, which consequently renders the process expen- 

 sive, and with colored materials the same liquid answers only 

 twice, or at most three times, while the consumption of fuel 

 is considerable. A new process, devised by Dr. Wagner, but 

 not yet published, based on very different chemical reactions, 

 is claimed by him to obviate all these objections, and to be 

 very cheap, and to demand little care, while at the same time 

 it does not affect the character of the wool fibres. 13 C, 

 Jiili/ 1,1818,854:. 



ALLOYS OF MA^'GANESE. 



At the meeting of the British Association in 1870, Mr. 

 J. F. Allen, F.C.S., described several manganese alloys in a 

 paper read before it. An alloy of copper, with from five to 

 thirty per cent, of manganese, he found to be ductile, malle- 

 able, and considerably more tenacious than copper. With 

 zinc, copper, and manganese, an alloy was obtained resem- 

 bling in some of its qualities German silver. Besides these, 

 other alloys were made and experimented upon. 



INTERN ATIOXAL STANDARD FOR NUMBERING TARN. 



The international congress, held at Vienna in July, to es- 

 tablish a uniform standard for assorting yarns, after consid- 

 erable discussion of a variety of propositions, came to the 

 following conclusions : That the present occasion was most 



