178 MANUFACTUKE OF PAPER. 



the principal supplies of linen rags, both to Great Britain and the 

 United States. They are exported from Bremen, Hamburg, Ancona, 

 Leghorn, Messina, Palermo, and Trieste. The rags of our own country 

 are generally pretty clean, and require little washing and no bleaching 

 before they are ground into pulp ; those from Sicily are so dirty, that 

 they are washed in lime before they are fit for exportation, and those 

 from the north of Europe are so dark in the color, and so coarse in their 

 texture, that it is difficult- to believe that they could ever have formed 

 part of under garments. Many experiments have been made upon sub- 

 stances, proposed as substitutes for rags in the manufacture of paper. 

 The bark of the willow, the beech, the aspen, the hawthorn, and the lime, 

 have been made into tolerable paper; the tendrils of the vine, and the 

 stalks of the nettle, the mallow and the thistle, have also been tried ; the 

 bine of English hops, it is said, will furnish paper enough for our con- 

 sumption, and several patents have been taken out. Straw also has been 

 used, and the late Mr. Cobbett had some made from the straw of Indian 

 Maize. 



MANUFACTURE OF PAPER BY MACHINES 



Has nearly superseded the making of it by hand. It is exceedingly 

 difficult, without wood cuts or diagrams, to explain this beautiful process, 

 brought as it is, by various recent improvements, to the highest state of 

 perfection ; and it is scarcely possible to conceive (without personal 

 inspection), the wonderful celerity with which the most filthy old shreds 

 are transformed, by these machines, into the purest white paper. 



Sorting and cutting the rags. This is done by women over a wire 

 frame, through which the dirt falls ; the pieces of rag, according to their 

 fineness, are put into different compartments of a box, first being cut into 

 the size of three or four inches square, by the blade of a long knife set 

 upright upon a table. A good hand can cut and sort about a hundred 

 weight a day ; the rags are then weighed and taken to the 



Washing Shed. Here they are put into chests, and by the introduction 

 of steam power are washed, torn and beaten; and if very dirty, they are 

 boiled. The water being run off by pipes, the mass is removed to the 

 press for the purpose of driving out the water which yet remains in it; 

 the mass is still a dirty whited brown color, and it is now placed in the 



Jjleaching Chamber. This is composed of wood, from which the 

 atmospheric air is carefully excluded. Into this chamber are conveyed 



