ON RHEEA BY HIS PATENT PROCESS. 



359 



factories fully employed, has only now, in the year I860, 

 because of the high price of Flax, nine Flax factories at work. 

 This fact was declared by Mr. Richardson, M.B. for Lisburn, 

 as chairman at a meeting of the India Flax Company in 

 Belfast, last month. 



' ' The high price of Flax, silk, and wool, contrasted with 

 that of Indian fibres, would lead to the belief that every class 

 of spinners should feel interested in introducing these, as an 

 additional material for our manufacturers. 



"Mr. Dickson has been the first to discover that these 

 vegetable fibres can be mixed in a sliver with animal fibres 

 and spun and dyed equally, as if all sheep's wool or silk goods, 

 and for this discovery he has the exclusive patent right for 

 Great Britain and Ireland, the Continent, India, and America. 



" Dr. Forbes Royle filled, to his lamented death, the office 

 now held by Dr. Watson in the East India House ; and, 

 in many parts of his valuable works on Indian products, bears 

 impartial testimony to the important bearings of Mr. Dickson's 

 discovery, in his successful mode of treating these fibres 

 and adapting them to the wants of our manufacturers. 



" The following letters prove Dr. Royle's opinion of Mr. 

 Dickson's patent method of preparing Indian fibres, and the 

 wild rheea in particular. The extensive firm of Messrs 

 Marshall and Co., flax-spinners, Leeds, informed Dr. Royle. 

 by letter, which appears in his book of Indian fibres, that the 

 rheea he sent them was only worth £-18 per ton, and only fit 

 for making ropes. Mr. Dickson has made it as fine as silk, 

 and sold it at £224 per ton, in Bradford, Yorkshire, in 1860, 

 to Mr. W. Whit taker (late partner in the extensive firm 

 of Messrs. Milligan, Forbes, and Co.), who made the forty 

 varieties of cloth from it that were exhibited at the Society of 

 Arts in May, 1860, and entered into a contract to give 

 £10,000 for the English patent, and paid on account £850 

 to Mr. Dickson." 



