THE TECHNOLOGIST. 



NOTES ON TANNING SUBSTANCES. 



BY WALTER G. FRY. 



In Statute 1st James I., cap. 22 (a. d. 1603), entitled "An Act 

 concerning Tanners, Curriers, &c," is the following : — "Section 11. 

 And be it further enacted, by authority aforesaid, that after the 

 Feast of St Bartholemew next coming, no person or persons what- 

 soever which shall after the said feast occupy or use, by him or them- 

 selves, or by any other person or persons, the craft or mystery of tanning 

 leather, shall suffer any hide or skin to lie in the limes till the same be 

 overlimed ; nor shall put any hides or skins into any tan-fats before the 

 lime be well and perfectly soakened and wrought out of them, and every 

 of them ; nor shall use, employ, occupy, or put, by themselves, or by any 

 other person or persons, any thing or stuff in or about the workmanship or 

 tanning of leather, but only ash bark, oak bark, tapwort, malt, meal, 

 lime, culver dung, or hen dung." All the leather tanned in any way con- 

 trary to the Act (which is a very long and curious one) was to be for- 

 feited. 



By sections 18 and 19 of the same Act, it is enacted that no person 

 shall buy " any oaken bark, before it be stripped or after, to the intent to 

 sell the same again." This was to prevent specidation. 



By Statute 12th George III., c. 50 (a. d. 1772), it is enacted 

 " that at all times hereby when the price of oak bark shall be under ten 

 pounds for the load of hatch bark containing forty-five hundredweight, 

 delivered at the buyers' warehouses in the City of London, or within the 

 weekly bills of mortality, no oak bark whatsoever shall be allowed to 

 be imported into Great Britain." Another section of the same Act 

 provides for the importation of oak bark when the price exceeds ten 

 pounds as aforesaid. Such restrictions as these would not suit the 

 requirements of the present day, the necessity for and the production 

 of leather having so greatly increased since the year when the last- 

 named Act was passed. 



No two substances will produce the same description of leather. Whe- 

 ther this is owing to any difference in the variety of tannin, or owing 



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