294 Annual Report of the Council. 



writer is not mistaken, attended the Manchester meeting, 

 and when he in 1834 said that benzol could be obtained 

 from coal, he most probably arrived at this conclusion 

 because the products of the distillation of oil are very similar 

 to those obtained from coal. 



From the shop in St. Mary's Gate, Mr. Dale went as 

 manager to a print-works in Ardwick, and the knowledge 

 of printing and dyeing which he thus acquired became of 

 the greatest use to him afterwards. 



In the year 1852 he started, with Mr. Roberts, the well 

 known chemical works at Cornbrook, and soon introduced 

 many new processes of manufacture. The paper-hanging 

 trade began to develop at this time, and Dale replaced the 

 older colours by much brighter and finer ones, such as a 

 much superior class of chrome-yellows and of lakes, as the 

 compounds of organic colouring matters with certain 

 metallic oxides are called. Such lakes, with a base of 

 alumina, had for a long time been made from sappan-wood, 

 peach-wood, &c. ; but they had several disadvantages, which 

 restricted their use in practice, not being permanent and 

 having little body. Moreover, they were gelatinous and 

 cracked on drying. Mr. Dale avoided this by using oxide 

 of tin as a base, and thus produced lakes which, owing 

 partly to their physical condition, and partly to their 

 chemical composition, possessed the requisite degree of 

 permanency and intensity of colour. Of these a beautiful 

 scarlet lake from bar-wood may be specially mentioned, 

 because it is obtained by a method which could only have 

 been devised by a practical calico printer. The colouring 

 matter of bar-wood is very slightly soluble in water ; the 

 ground wood is, therefore, simply treated with boiling water 

 and the required quantity of oxide of tin is added, which 

 absorbs at once the colouring matter as soon as it gets into 

 solution, and thus more and more dissolves and combines 

 with the oxide until the lake has acquired the requisite 

 intensity of colour and the wood is exhausted. 



