No. 105.] 493 



REPORT 



On Messrs. Billings and Harrison^s Hemp and Flax-dressing Machi- 

 nery and process for rotting the same. 



Your committee take pleasure in stating that they have examined 

 the process and machinery above named, and that in all its details 

 they find the process for rotting superior, and more certain in its re- 

 sults than any plan previously known to them. The rotting pools 

 have peculiar advantages, from the ease with which the rapidity and 

 regularity of the process can be controlled ; and the after drying and 

 evaporation of the aqueous matter, and retention of the feculent, 

 without decomposition, as described by them, is theoretically correct, 

 and consequently practically useful. This method of rotting and 

 drying will probably render American hemp fully equal to Russian, 

 and the flax of our country as good as the Flemish or French. 



The machinery for breaking has been only seen by the committee 

 in operation upon flax, and when combined, as seen by them with 

 the skutching process, the flax is ready for market, fully as well 

 cleaned from shives, and freer from tow, than by the ordinary hand 

 process of breaking and swingling; at the same time the strength of 

 the fibre is not in any way impaired. The skutching process as mo- 

 dified by them, appears to possess some advantge over the usual form 

 of such machinery. 



Samples of hemp, (American water rotted,) broken and skutched 

 in a state for market by the above mentioned machinery, in Missouri, 

 were exhibited to the committee, and are more clean, and better 

 freed from shives, than any they have before seen, while at the same 

 time the fibre of the hemp is equally carried out in thickness to the 

 end of the head, and in their opinion, such hemp would waste less in 

 hackling than that broken and cleaned by hand. 



JAMES REN WICK, Chairman. 

 JAMES J. MAPES, 

 HENRY B. RENWICK, 

 JAMES R. CHILTON, M. D. 



Committee. 



JYeW'York, October ^ 1845. 



