WATY?’S PROCESS FOR PREPARING FLAX. 205 
utilise the products of the steep-water, which had previously 
always been a nuisance. All this has been done by Watt’s 
method of preparing Flax, and which I had the advantage, in 
September, 1852, of viewing, through the kindness of Dr. 
Hodges, before all the works at Messrs. Leadbetter’s were 
quite completed; but even in this state, the Author saw 
enough to be at a loss whether most to admire, the skill with 
which the principles of science had been brought to bear on 
the perfecting of a practical art, or the success with which 
mechanical contrivances had been applied to the completeness 
of every part of the process. We subjoin the following 
account from the ‘Journal of the Chemico-Agricultural Society’ 
of Ulster,’ for January, 1853. To this, we have added Dr. 
Hodges’s analysis of the steep-water, obtained by this patent 
process. 
“ At the meeting of the British Association of Science in this 
town, in September, the details of a new and totally different 
process for the separation of the Flax fibre was, by permission 
of the patentee, Mr. Watt, first made known to the public, by 
Dr. Hodges, and excited much interest. Since that time, 
trials of the new process have been made on a most extensive 
scale, at works erected for the purpose in Belfast. As various 
imperfect accounts of Mr. Watt’s process have been published, 
the following account of the apparatus, and operations con- 
nected with it, will be interesting to our readers. 
“In Mr. Watt’s process the solution of the cementing matters 
of the Flax straw, and the separation of the fibre, is effected, 
not by the ordinary methods of fermentation, but by exposing 
the straw to the action of steam, in a chamber of peculiar con- 
struction, and afterwards subjecting it to pressure, applied by 
means of heavy metal rollers. The first operation consists in 
placing the seeded Flax in a chamber, formed of plates of cast 
iron. 
“The chamber used measures about twelve feet in length, 
and is about six feet broad and six feet in depth, and contains 
about fifteen cwt. of Flax. On the top is a tank for con- 
taining water, also of cast iron, about eighteen inches deep, 
the bottom of which forms the roof of the chamber, and 
through which passes a tube, furnished with a valve. There 
are two doors in the ends of the chambers, through which 
