in 



BLEEDING. 



BLIGHT. 



Itt 



singeing the doth by means of hot plates or jets of gu. The bleach- 

 ing comprises all the processes of chemical nature. The finiiliing 

 include* mangling, drying, calendering, hooking, folding, making-lip, 

 labelling, and jacking. Whore the dyeing is effected by the bleacher 

 (which U often the cue) it U included among the processes of 

 finishing." At a large bleaching establishment near Bolton, Mr. 

 Tremenheere found the designations of work people to be more than 

 twenty in number : the loaders, banders, dressers, bowkers, crofters, 

 wheelers, tubbers, baggers, white-washers, squeezers, white-mangier*, 

 dyed-mangier*, rawers, stovers, pelters, calenderers, makers-u]>, calico- 

 pickers, shirting- packers, beetlers, chest-nianglers, canroyera, dyers, 

 black-dyers, stitchers. Mr. Tremenheere appears to have been unable 

 to ascertain the total number of hands engaged in this trade. The 

 largest firms mentioned by him are Messrs. Ainsworth's, Messrs. Ridg- 

 way's, and Messrs. Hardcastle's, all in the Bolton and Bury district, 

 and employing respectively 508, 461, and 440 hands at the time of the 

 inquiry. Concerning the long hours of work, there was no doubt, Mr. 

 Tremenheere said " Some masters will hare so much employment as 

 to keep their hands employed for twelve months together from 

 between six and seven in the morning until eight, nine, or ten at night ; 

 and a portion of their hands will occasionally work on to a later time, 

 and sometimes nearly all night, for two or three nights together. The 

 evidence show* that both at the large and small bleaching and finishing 

 works a very common state of tilings is that the work goes on for these 

 ' long bourn ' (as they ore colled) continuously for months together ; in 

 some instances, for so many a* six months, in others for twelve months 

 or more." On a review of all the observations made and evidence 

 taken, Mr. Tremenheere arrived at an opinion that the hours of labour 

 for women and young persons in bleach works ought to be limited by 

 legislative enactment admitting, at the same time, that the working 

 expenses would be increased thereby. 



Towards the close of 1855, another bill was brought into the House 

 of Commons, to carry out the commissioner's recommendations ; but 

 this, partly owing to the advanced state of the session, and partly to 

 the opposition raised, was thrown out on the second reading. In 1856 

 a further attempt was made, but was defeated by a still larger majority 

 than in the preceding year. In 1857, owing to doubts expressed con- 

 cerning the correctness of Mr. Tremenheere's statements and deductions, 

 the House of Commons appointed a committee " To inquire into the 

 circumstances connected with the employment of women and children 

 in the bleaching and dyeing establishments in England, Scotland, and 

 Ireland ; and to consider how far it may be necessary or expedient to 

 extend to those establishments provisions regulating such employ- 

 ment*. " The committee presented one report on the 5th of July, and 

 another on the 28th simply announcing that the inquiry was not 

 completed, and recommending the re-appointment of the committee in 

 the next session, 1858. The master bleachers examined by the com- 

 mittee declared, as with one voice, that the hours of working cannot 

 be made regular ; the orders come to them irregularly, and must be 

 attended to whenever and as soon as they come. The nature of the 

 market is such as to give generally two very long seasons in the year 

 to the bleachers, in spring and autumn, with intervening periods of 

 greater leisure ; and the bleachers assigned reasons why it is better to 

 vary the hours of work than the number of hands. During the 

 session of 1858, the attention of parliament was too much absorbed by 

 other subjects to attend to the one in question ; and down to the 

 present time (May 1859) bleach works remain free from the operations of 

 the Factory Act, or of any statute limiting the employment of women 

 and children. 



For certain particulars further illustrating the subject of the present 

 article, see BANDANAS: CALENDERING ; CALICO-PRINTING ; DYEING; 

 FACTORIES, and FACTORY ACTS. 



BLEEDING, the operation by which blood is removed from the 

 body, with a view to the prevention and cure of disease. Bleeding is 

 either general or local General bleeding is practised when the object 

 is to Iftsscin the whole mass of the circulating blood ; local, when the 

 object is to lessen the quantity in some particular part of the body. 

 General bleeding consists either in opening a vein (venesection), or in 

 opening an artery (arteriotomy). Venesection, the most common mode 

 of abstracting blood, is a simple operation, and in skilful hands neat, 

 elegant, and safe ; but in unskilful hands dirty, bungling, and exceed- 

 ingly unsafe : it is always performed with a lancet. Various means 

 are employed for the removal of blood from particular ports of the 

 body, such as cupping-glasses, the scarificator, the division of visibly 

 distended vessels with a lancet, and leeches. The mode of performing 

 the operation of venesection and arteriotomy is fully detailed in the 

 common books on surgery, where the requisite precautions are pointed 

 out. It is only necessary to add here, in reference to local bleeding, 

 and more especially to the application of leeches, that when there is a 

 difficulty in making Icechex fix readily on any particular part, they 

 may often be made to do so at once, by first cooling the part with a 

 cloth dipped in cold water, or by moistening it with cream or milk, or 

 a single drop of porter, and then confining the leeches in the proper 

 situation under a small glass. It should be borne in mind that these 

 Mllmil* are cold-blooded, that heat is highly injurious to them, and 

 that handling them with the warm hand, or keeping them long out of 

 water in a heated room, totally unfiU them for the performance of 

 their office. Great fatigue to the patient, great aggravation of his 



disease, and even the loss of life itself, sometimes result from the igno- 

 rant and unskilful manner in which attempts are made to apply leeches. 

 In the diseases of infanta and children especially, in which general 

 bleeding can rarely be employed, the preservation of life constantly 

 depends on the efficient application of leechei 



It is scarcely one time in a hundred that thu physician finds a single 

 person in a family who has the slightest notion of the proper mode of 

 performing this service to the sick. It would be wonderful indeed were 

 it otherwise, when the education of women, in reference to the entire 

 class of subjects the knowledge of which U nee easily to qualify them 

 fnr the performance of their duties as nurses and as mothers, is 

 universally and wholly neglected. 



Tin conditions of the system which require the abstraction of blood, 

 and the benefit which the removal of it is capable of effecting, will be 

 better understood after reading the account of the blood. [BLOOD, 

 NAT. HIST. Drv.l 



BLENDE. (ZnS.) The natural sulphide of zinc, constituting an 

 important ore of that metal. [Zisc, SCLPHIOK or.] 



BLIGHT, a popular name for any kind of pestilence which affect* 

 cultivated plants by curling up or destroying their leaves and blossoms, 

 or by giving them a yellow sickly appearance, or by covering certain 

 parts of them with unnatural colours. Dr. Lindley thus describes the 

 popular idea which the word under various circumstances is used to 

 express. " Blight is a sunstroke or frostbite, a plague of insects or of 

 fungi, a paralysis of the roots, a gust of bad air; it is wetness, it is 

 dryness, it is heat, it is cold, it is plethora, it is starvation, in short it 

 is anything that disfigures or destroys the foliage." To a term tlm- 

 loosely applied no precise meaning can be assigned ; for the effects to 

 which it relates are produced by causes of totally different kinds. The 

 attacks of insects, especially of the aphis, produce a curling in leaves, 

 and a stoppage of growth ; caterpillars spread their nets from branch 

 to branch, destroying all they meet with ; cold dry winds in the spring, 

 or sharp night frosts at the same period, cause an appearance of 

 scorching ; and finally the ravages of numerous parasitical fungi, some 

 of which are superficial and others intestinal, are the origin of much 

 that is popularly called blight. The attacks of insects form a subject 

 which it is the business of the entomologist to explain. Blight from 

 the attacks of parasitical fungi will be explained under the head of 

 MILDEW ; that which is produced by meteorological influences may 

 find a brief notice in this place. 



Nothing can be more absurd than the explanations of this malady as 

 given by many writers on gardening, nor anything more simple than it 

 is in reality. One person talks gravely of its being caused by certain 

 transparent flying vapours, which may sometimes take such a form as 

 to converge the sun's rays like a burning-glass. The fact appears to be 

 this : when a plant first produces its young branches and leaves, all 

 the new-born parts are tender and succulent, and part with their fluid 

 matter with rapidity until the solidification of the recently-created 

 tissue has token place. To enable this function to be performed 

 regularly and without interruption, it is necessary, 1. that the air 

 should be in a certain state of humidity, or the perspiring ports will 

 lose their aqueous particles too fast; and, 2. that the temperature 

 should not be low enough to destroy the vitality of the tissue. Suppose 

 these conditions to be maintained without interruption, leaves and 

 branches gradually become fully formed, and no blight appears ; but 

 if, as frequently happens in this country, the air is rendered extremely 

 dry by the prevalence of easterly winds, the young ports perspire with 

 such rapidity that the loss thus occasioned cannot be made good by the 

 roots, and the consequence is that the tissue becomes dried up and 

 scorched as it were, or at all events is brought into a more or less 

 diseased condition. Such is blight properly so called, if that term can 

 be considered applicable to any particular form of disease. It will be 

 obvious that the only remedy for this, after it has occurred, will be the 

 restoration of the atmosphere to the necessary state of humidity, or 

 to a sufficiently equable temperature. For this, artificial means can 

 only be employed upon a limited scale, and perhaps the only practice 

 which is ever attended with much advantage is frequently washing the 

 blighted plants with a syringe. It has by some been recommended 

 that wet litter should be burned to the windward of large tracts 

 covered with blighted plants, and it has been supposed that the smoke 

 thus produced will remedy it by destroying insects, its imaginary cause ; 

 but if any effect is ever obtained from such a practice, it is not by 

 the destruction of insects, but by the interposition of a canopy of 

 smoke at night between the plants and the sky, by which radiation is 

 stopped, and the severity of the cold diminished. 



Blight is often used to designate the mischief done by those insects 

 which are destructive to vegetation ; and consequently many insects of 

 various genera and even orders must be included under this common 

 denomination ; but it is not our intention, however, to describe the 

 habits of all these various species, as they will be found under their 

 respective heads in NAT. HIST. Dry. 



The aphides, or plant lice, especially, are great pests to the gardener. 

 [Arms, NAT. HIST. Div.j It may be observed, however, that as each 

 infested plant has its peculiar aphis, and as the aphides are quite as 

 numerous (if not more so) when the plants are covered with a glass as 

 when they are exposed, it is absurd to imagine that blight is bn <! in 

 the air (the vulgar notion), and brought to these plants by the wind. 

 Certain winds may be more favourable than others for hatching the 



