110 TEXTILE FIBRES. 



this system. In an article Mr. Butterworth wrote to the Textile 

 Mercury of 1st May 1897, he says : " Some time during the 

 month of December 1894, a Liverpool firm received a batch of 

 100 of these cylindrical bales, which were put on the market, and 

 my firm bought ten bales, which we received at the mill on 9th 

 January 1895. 



"As a proof that mill men here viewed the attempted change of the 

 form of the old American bale with considerable interest, I may state 

 that the shipper of the above 100 bales wrote, a few days after their 

 receipt at the mill, to ask if we would resell to him part of the ten bales 

 we had bought, as other customers wished to try them. However, as I 

 could see that to do so would not give us a fair chance of speaking in 

 favour of or against this form of bale (as we had been requested by the 

 shipper to do), I declined to sanction the resale of any part of the lot. 

 So I had the whole lot rolled off, keeping a close watch upon them 

 during this process. One great fault of the bales was their unwieldy 

 length the usual length of a Bead's bale, or in other words, nearly six 

 feet long. I confess we only fixed a temporary apparatus to unroll them 

 from ; but such a length of a cylindrical bale would condemn it, whatever 

 good qualities it might have in other respects. The cylindrical bale 

 ought not to exceed the length of a Surat bale, about four feet. The 

 average weight of the bales was about 500 Ibs. ; but this weight would be 

 no objection in handling if all other faults were removed. In unrolling 

 therifl noticed nothing to object to in the appearance of the fibre. I did not 

 see that it was in any way damaged ; and I do not see why it should be, 

 as it has to undergo quite as much pressure in its after-treatment as it 

 would have in forming it into the bale. There was the usual amount of 

 leaf and other dirt in the cotton ; nor did I consider there was any less 

 dust, and the loss was the usual percentage of our experience. The bales 

 unwound all right until they got to just under one-half size, when the 

 fleece began to unroll in a more matted state. This matting of the 

 cotton increased as we got nearer the iron tube, forming the core of the 

 bale, so much so that it had become hard, caked, discoloured, as if the fleece 

 had been rolled up in a very moist state, which I fully believe had been 

 the case, so as to form a more solid bale. 



"The plan of running the production of several gins together, as 

 shown by one of the illustrations in the article alluded to above, offers 

 considerable facility for damping, especially in the middle part of the 

 fleece. That excessive moisture had been used in forming the ten 

 bales I had to deal with, I am fully convinced ; all exhibited the same 

 hard, matted character of the fleece in nearly half of the bale next 

 the centre. 



