BLEACHING. 



and occasionally turned, until it is found to be very 

 brittle; so that on being rubbed between the 

 hands, the woody part easily separates. It is then 

 dried by the heat of the sun or of a kiln. 



The flax is now ready to be beat or broke by a 

 mill for the purpose, or by mallets on a sort of 

 wooden anvil. The fibres of the flax are thus 

 separated from the wood, which is reduced to frag- 

 ments, most of which are cleared away by scutching. 



To divide completely the fibres from each other, 

 and to separate the remaining part of the wood, the 

 process of hackling is employed. This consists in 

 drawing the flax through piles or groups of sharp 

 and polished iron spikes, placed close together, and 

 fixed in wood. The hackles are of various degrees 

 of fineness ; that is, the spikes are placed at different 

 degrees of distance from each other. The coarsest, 

 or most open hackles, are used first ; then a finer, 

 and so on, till the process is completed. 



The flax is now ready to be spun into thread or 

 yarn, which is manufactured into cloth by the 

 weaver. 



The linen, as it comes from the loom, is of a 

 brownish grey colour ; and it is then that the pro- 

 cess of bleaching begins. 



The linen is first steeped in cold water for 48 

 hours, to discharge from it the weaver's dressing ; 

 which is a paste of flour and water, that had been 

 brushed into the yarn to enable them to stretch it 

 more easily. 



The grey substance that colours the linen before 

 it is bleached is of a resinous nature, and conse- 

 quently it is insoluble in water. It is also intimately 

 united with the fibres of the flax, and is of difficult 

 separation. What appears to the eye to be a single 

 fibre is, in fact, a bundle of minute filaments, agglu. 



