The Manufacture of Paper. 51 
vats are used, as there is considerable saving in time and in 
the amount of alkali used; besides which, there is the great 
advantage of having the coating thoroughly destroyed, and 
that without the expense of a crushing. When lime is used, 
the grass fibres are hardly acted upon at all. I don’t know 
whether this method has ever been used with New Zealand 
flax, I think it might answer, for that material is so readily 
acted on by an alkali or an acid, that it is impossible to treat 
it in a vat. 
An alkaline solution which had hardly any affect on 
Aerotes Longifolia or Lepidospermia, completely destroyed 
the fibre of the flax. The solution I used contained slightly 
over one per cent. of caustic soda, and the experiments were 
conducted in open vessels at a temperature of 212° F., so 
that the quantity of alkali I used would be in excess of what 
is required in a high pressure boiler. Jam not quite certain 
of the amount of lime or alkali which would be required per 
ton of the grasses whose use I have proposed, asit will need 
experiments on a larger scale than any I have been able to 
make to fix it definitely. 
It has been proposed to treat raw materials without the 
aid of solutions—first passing them through crushing rollers 
and packing the crushed material.in a strong iron vessel, and 
then introducing super-heated steam, which is said to act far 
more effectually and in much less time than the rotary boiler 
process, but I have only the patentee’s statement to go 
upon. The use of super-heated steam has been patented 
before, but it has always been introduced into vessels con- 
taining alkaline solutions, the patentees forgetting that the 
steam would give upits extraheat to convert the water present 
into vapour, and that the concentrated alkaline solution 
which would be formed, would act most detrimentally upon 
the fibres. There are other methods of treating raw mate- 
rials, but no great success has yet attended any of them. 
There is also the manufacture of paper from wood, which 
may scon become one of importance, though the paper will 
never be a strong one. 
After one of the processes I have spoken of has been gone 
through, the fibre is washed and beaten into pulp in wha is 
termed the pulping-engine; and if for brown paper,it is then 
coloured and sized as required before passing ont to the 
Foudeneir machine to be rolled into paper. But if white 
paper is required, it has to be bleached ; this in the-case of 
vegetable fibres takes much longer than in the case of rags, 
E 2 
