grained Parchment , or Shagreen , 315 
till the colour begins to be dissolved. Five pounds of 
pounded alakar , which is a kind of barilla or crude soda, 
prepared by the Armenians and Calmucs, is then dissolv- 
ed in it, with two pounds of lime* and a pound of pure 
honey, and the whole is kept several days in the sun, and 
during that time frequently stirred round. The skins in- 
tended to be dyed blue must be moistened only in the 
natrous ley schora , but not in the salt brine. When still 
moist, they are folded up and sewed together at the edge, 
the flesh side being innermost, and the shagreened hair 
side outwards ; after which they are dipped three times 
in the remains of an exhausted kettle of the same- 'die, the 
superfluous dye being each time expressed ; and after this 
process they are dipped in the fresh dye prepared as 
above, which must not be expressed. The skins are 
then hung up in the shade to dry ; after which they are 
cleaned anti paired at the edges. 
For black shagreen, gall-nuts and vitriol are employed 
in the following manner :— The skins, moist fjfrom the 
pickle, are thickly bestrewed with finely pulverised gall- 
nuts. They are then folded together, and laid over each 
other for twenty-four hours. A new ley, of bitter saline 
earth or schora , is in the mean time prepared, and poured 
hot into small troughs. In this ley each skin is several 
times dipped ; after which they are again bestrewed with 
pounded gall-nuts, and placed in heaps for a certain pe= 
riod, that the galls may thoroughly penetrate them, and 
they are dried and beat, to free them from the dust of the 
galls. When this is done, they are rubbed over, on the 
shagreen side, with melted sheep’s tallow, and exposed 
a little in the sun, that they may imbibe the grease. The 
* Quick-lime is probably meant here, which, by taking up the carbonic acid of 
the alkali, and thereby rendering it caustic, will enable it to effect a mechanical 
solution, or rather an impalpable comminution, of the indigo.—' Til loch. 
