NA TURE 



THURSDAY, MAY 24, 1894. 



PRACTICAL PAPER MAKING. 



Practical Paper Making. By George Clapperton. 

 (London: Crosby Lockwood and Son, 1894.) 



THE book before us is not without value. The chap- 

 ters devoted to paper-inaking proper, that is, to 

 the mechanical details of the art, contain a great deal of 

 useful information ; and although "experience" must be 

 classed as of the " incommunicables," the notes and 

 observations of an experienced man serve to concentrate 

 the attention of the less experienced upon those points, 

 the mastery of which constitutes technical skill. Tech- 

 nological handbooks, however, ought in our opinion to 

 possess the higher (•(/;cC(i//V;;/rt/ value belonging only to 

 those which preserve the perspective of the subject of 

 which they treat. .\ book, like a lecture, must be'diagram- 

 matic to be effective educationally ; and in this i,ense it 

 must bean artistic production. We do not by any means 

 imply that a certain level of literary style must be 

 attained and maintained. In the "literature" of the 

 industrial and physical sciences we must be content, it 

 would seem, with the irreducible minimum of '' Queen's 

 English." What we do imply is the infusion of person- 

 ality, in the clear grasp of principles, and in the conse- 

 quent development of the subject-matter according to 

 its natural perspective. Judged from this stand-point, 

 " Practical Paper Making " must be labelled " found 

 wanting." If we apply to the art or industry the crude 

 criterion of money values, we find that in the production 

 of paper the proportion of costs, for raw materials, and 

 their chemical treatment, are in this, in comparison with 

 many other industries, unusually high ; this being 

 " practically " interpreted, means that chemistry is of 

 first importance in the mill. The author makes an 

 oblique confession of his convictions in this direction in 

 his opening sentence : " As the chemical and physical 

 characteristics of the materials .... determine to a 

 marked degree the qualities of the finished product, a 

 thorough grasp of these characteristics is indispensable 

 to all who aim at the production of the best possible 

 results with the minimum of cost." We are quickly 

 reminded, however, of the adage, " red dawning shep- 

 herd's warning,' as the author plunges at once from 

 the sunshine of first principles into a much less pro- 

 mising treatment of practical matters, opening with the 

 following remarkable sentence : — 



" The percentage of cellulose — or to use a term more 

 readily understood by paper-makers, the amount of 

 available paper-making material — varies with the plants 

 from which it is obtained, and the treatment to which it 

 is subjected " 



Comment would be superfluous. He then proceeds to 

 extract comfort from " the chemical formula of cellu- 

 lose — CgH, 1,0,— which means that six equivalents of 

 carbon, ten of hydrogen, and five of oxygen are united 

 together to form the substance known by that name." 

 This evidently has the effect upon the practical paper- 

 maker which is recorded of the " blessed word Mesopo- 

 tamia" in another sphere of experience. That is all as 

 NO. 1282, VOL. 50] 



to cellulose proper I " Oxycellulose " is then alluded to, 

 and described as possessing "an extraordinary affinity 

 (or vanilline compounds, uniting with them from solutions 

 containing infinitesimal proportions." It would be 

 thankless criticism to single out mere mistakes from 

 what might be in other respects good matter ; but the 

 mistakes in this work are as slovenly as the matter — 

 "vanilline" for "vanadium" (p. 2), and "hypochlorite," 

 used on three successive occasions, for " hyposulphite " 

 (pp. 29-30), are typical mistakes ; and for looseness of 

 construction, which characterises the matter throughout, 

 we commend the following example : — " Sulphate of 

 alumina is not a chemical compound of a definite com- 

 position, as the alumina varies between 2 and 3 per cent., 

 though that purchased from reliable makers generally 

 contains 15 or 16 per cent." (pp. 71-72). If the author's 

 want of precision were an occasional lapse merely, with 

 the effect of befogging a particular point, we should not 

 have challenged the work upon the issue we have raised ; 

 but it extends to the entire ordering and treatment of the 

 subject-matter. The sources from which the author has 

 compiled his account of the chemical processes of the 

 mill are familiar to us. He has probably aimed at re- 

 producing what he may consider the essential and 

 practical features of the originals. But the result is a 

 second-hand and garbled version, and in many important 

 places, more especially where efiects are discussed in 

 relation to causes, essentially wrong. Thus (p. 6) "jute 

 fibres " are described as " strong but very difficult to 

 bleach white, and if subjected to such treatment as will 

 dissolve all the extraneous matter and reduce to ultimate 

 fibres, their original strength is much impaired." The 

 facts are that jute is easily bleached white, but then is 

 no longer jute but jute-cellulose ; and on the structural 

 question the destruction of the filament by no means 

 implies disintegration of the ultimate fibre. Then again 

 (p. 7), " Straw fibres are very similar in appearance to 

 esparto, but shorter and more highly polished, tending 

 to make their filling power much less, and rendering paper 

 made from them very brittle." In another place (p. 47), 

 " Papers made from straw are, owing to the hard nature 

 of the ultimate fibres, very hard and brittle." Any ex- 

 planation appears to some minds better than none, even 

 a re-statement of the fact to be explained, in somewhat 

 varied terms. It does not occur to the author that straw 

 " cellulose " differs constitutionally from esparto, and with 

 these differences are correlated not only the relatively 

 low yields of bleached straw pulp (which the author 

 labours to explain on p. 40), but generally its relationships 

 to oxygen and water (hydration), and these again with its 

 paper-making qualities. 



It would serve no useful purpose to continue our criti- 

 cisms. The best we can say of the work is that it 

 represents a good deal of thought on the part of a man 

 skilled in his art, and struggling to compass the science 

 upon which its successful practice primarily depends. It 

 may be that in this endeavour the author has followed 

 the classic maxim : " If you want to learn a subject, 

 write a book upon it." 



To those who will bear in mind that the chemical part 

 [ of the work is a compilation, not well digested, and in 

 j some places unsound, we have no hesitation in recom- 

 1 mending it. 



