of the Fishery Board for Scotland. 



17 



The second set, composed of four large tanks, contained a turbid 

 alizarin waste where the fatty matter was skimmed off. The next 

 set contained a fluid of a dense brown colour principally composed 

 of a substance, not a dye, used in the after-treatment of dyed 

 material. The remaining set of tanks were so subdivided that the 

 waste fluids travelling slowly through them took a most tortuous 

 course, and so prolonged the operation of settling. Fats were 

 freely thrown up and all soapy wash was curded. Yet the dis- 

 charge pipe showed a bright red fluid. The manager of those 

 works informed me that in their laboratory the coloured washes had 

 repeatedly been reduced to colourless fluids, but that this could not 

 be accomplished in practice without great expense. With regard 

 to more perfect filtering he also informed me that an experiment 

 with a special filter had resulted in complete clogging in two 

 hours, and that operations of purification in his work were there- 

 fore confined to settling as completely as the difficult nature of the 

 bye products allowed, and to the rendering of the effluents as nearly 

 neutral in reaction as possible. As a rule the reaction seems to 

 be slightly alkaline. Compared with such endeavours to purify 

 the effluents, the conditions observed elsewhere seemed unfavour- 

 able. At The Ferryfield Printing Co.'s Works, for instance — an 

 old work — the only tanks which could be shown me were two 

 small receptacles for waste wash situated under the floors of two 

 of the dye houses ; and at the works of The Calico Printers' 

 Association, Limited (formerly J. Black & Co.), no settling tanks, 

 properly so-called, exist, although an old dye-vat is used to catch 

 mixed colour waste. The old dye-vat appears to be cleaned out 

 once in 12 or 18 months. At the last-mentioned work three out- 

 falls into the river and one into the lade carry oft" most of the waste 

 fluids, although after washing the printing rollers the sediment is 

 reported to be removed. I here saw two tanks of hyper-chloride of 

 lime, but the chemist of the works maintained that practically 

 none reached the river. At the time of my visit one of the 

 discharge pipes from the printing house was passing into the river 

 a very bright yellow, of chrome and olivine. The bed of the river 

 below such discharges becomes thickly coated with various colours, 

 red, green, blue, yellow, as the last discharge determines. At 

 Dalquharn Works, the lowest on the river, where dyeing alone is 

 carried on, but where no clearing or settling seems to be attempted, 

 a thick deposit of chromate of lead was upon the stones of the 

 river edge (the dead body of a dog, another waste product given to 

 the river, was partly bright yellow and partly red). From this 

 point downwards the river presents the appearance of a large open 

 sewer, yet at this point we are barely five miles from Loch 

 Lomond, being about one mile from the mouth of the river. 



With regard to bleaching mixtures, I was particularly struck with 

 what I saw at the Cordale Works of the United Turkey Red Co., 

 which formerly belonged to Messrs. Wm. Stirling & Sons. A lime 

 tank at the back of the premises I could not regard but with 

 apprehension as a source of chlorine. It discharged into a section 

 of the lade passing out below the works. The outfall of this section 

 of the lade was suspiciously clear, stones beneath the water being 

 sharply outlined and without the appearance of either natural sedi- 



