MECHANICAL AND USEFUL ARTS. 115 



and shavings ; and, by a peculiar process, partly chemical and partly 

 mechanical, reducing them toa pulpy mass, and moulding them to any 

 desired form for useful and ornamental purposes. The goods manu- 

 factured are more durable, and 20 to 30 per cent, cheaper than all other 

 leather goods. The leather may be made as pliant as India-rubber, 

 or as hard as board, and becomes adapted to an endless variety of 

 uses, as bands for machinery, buckets for pumps (having all the 

 suction of leather, with tenfold durability), and rubber for pencil- 

 marks. It is adapted for all kinds of architectural ornamentation, 

 indoor or out, and is an excellent material for picture- frames. Mr. 

 R. Seager is stated, in the Suffolk Chronicle, to be the originator of 

 this useful invention. The gathering of the shavings and scraps of 

 leather reminds one of scraping the posted bills from the walls of 

 Paris, many years since, to serve as a material for the celebrated 

 'papkv-muche, the French name for an English invention. 



The Patent Painted and Gilded Leather Cloth has long been used 

 extensively in France, supplied by the company in Cannon-street, 

 London ; but here, as yet, it has only been occasionally used. In 

 the New Westminster Palace Hotel, for example, it is hung in the 

 smoking-room ; and, at the Royal Hotel, Bridge- street, Blackfriars, 

 in the billiard and reading-rooms. Many of the designs already 

 produced are very elegant ; and it may be made to present all the 

 elegance of gilded leather, the cuir dore and the cuir anjentv of the 

 Middle Ages ; while its cost is but trifling as compared with those 

 hangings with which, as we know, in the sixteenth and seventeenth 

 centuries, all the houses of the Venetian nobles and gentry were 

 hung. In England, tor), it was greatly used, and examples may 

 still be found in old houses. The cost of the painted and gilded 

 leather-cloth may be called about 2s. Gd. a yard square, being 

 enamelled by a patent process, which preserves the original beau f y 

 of the gilding, and allows it to be washed without injur} 1 . It is 

 very durable, and it could be hung on new walls, on which it would 

 not be safe to paint or put paper. 



The above Company, who have manufactories also in France and 

 Belgium, have large works at West Ham, where they employ about 

 150 men. — Builder. 



PROTECTION OF TEXTILE MATERIAL FROM FIRE. 



Mr. F. A. Abel, the chemist of the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, 

 has patented the means of affording Protection against Fire to 

 Textile -Materials in the raw or in the manufactured state, by im- 

 pregnating such materials with insoluble metallic silicates within the 

 fibre of the material. The process by which he effects this is as 

 follows : — " I take," he says, " a solution of lead, of zinc, or, prac- 

 tically speaking, of any other metallic base capable of forming, by its 

 action upon a soluble silicate, a double silicate, insoluble in water. 

 For this purpose I prefer the use of a basic acetate of lead prepared, 

 as is well known, by boiling sugar of lead and litharge with water ; 

 and although I have found that solutions of various strengths will 

 auswer the purpose, yet that which I prefer is prepared by boiling 

 H 2 



