160 Bleaching , &c. 
tus by tubes communicating from the retort to the first barrel, and 
from the first to a second. Sometimes the water is only impreg- 
nated with the acid, sometimes it is made to saturate lime or pearl 
ash. This process cannot be used with economy : the trouble and 
expence of retorts, and the attendance on the fire renders it far 
too complicated. It has not yet, and never will answer for goods in 
general. Where particular patterns are suddenly wanted for the 
market it may pay. 
The writer of this article attended for three years continually 
to the bleaching of cotton goods of various kinds, to the amount of 
800 pieces of callico per week, on the average of the year, by the 
following process. The goods underwent three boukings, as de- 
scribed before in this article, and two acid baths. The third was 
the oxygenated muriatic acid made as follows. In a building of 
one room on a bank and another over it, were placed on substantial 
frames or tressels, five wooden cylindrical machines four feet diam- 
eter by five feet long, the staves two and an half inches thick and 
well dovetailed. Into each of these, twice a day, through a funnel 
inserted in a two inch augur hole and let through the floor of the 
upper room was poured 75ib. of salt and 25lb, of red lead. To this 
was added 40lb. of oil of vitriol, weighing twenty -nine and a half 
ounces to the wine pint. 
The machine w as then filled with water, the augur hole stopt 
with a plug and rag, and then turned round 20 or 30 times, and in 
15 minutes the acid was made The vitriolic acid acts on the salt, 
and the marine acid thus produced acts on tire red lead, which in a few 
minutes is deprived of its oxygen, and converted into vitriol of lead. 
The handle of each machine was fixed on the centre of one of the 
ends with two cross-bars.. ...The acid when made was let off on the 
pieces placed in covered wooden vessels in a room adjoining and 
below. It frequently occasioned a spitting of blood among the work- 
men who took out the pieces, but was never attended with any 
further deleterious effects ; laudanum relieved the short phthisicky 
cough. One of these vessels full was allowed to 60 musiinets. 
No lead remained in the liquor, for vitriol of lead is insoluble. 
This process may be imitated in a small way, by pouring into a 
strong vial with a glass stopper, about an ounce of spirits of salt on 
a tea-spoonful of red-lead ; stop the vial, heat is generated, the lead 
turns white and a very strong oxygenated acid is produced in a mi- 
nute’s time. But this acid will contain a little lead, while the acid 
made with vitriol and salt contains scarcely any. Tins acid has* 
