126 WOOD PULP FOR PAPER. 
but this method of packing (resembling, in fact, bales of pressed hay) 
keeps the fibre clean, and renders it of easy stowage. 
In the above manner, considerable exports have lately taken place 
to France and Belgium, where its use is every day increasing ; and it is 
now introduced upon the English market in the same form, with the 
conviction that the superior advantages of packing, as well as condition 
and quality, will not fail to attract the notice of paper-manufacturers. 
The method of treatment for paper is now so well known that any- 
detailed statement is unnecessary. 
The chemical constituents of the plant are as follows :— 
Yellow colouring matter 12'0 > 
Red „ „ e '°\9R-*, 
Gum and resin 7'0r Di> 
Salts, forming the ashes of the Alfa .,. 1*5 ) 
Paper fibre 73*5 
1000 
M. de Paravey, in a recent communication to the Asademy of 
Sciences, Paris, called the attention of the members to a plant from 
which an excellent kind of paper is made in Upper Scinde and to the 
north of the Himalaya Mountains. This paper is much used in Thibet, 
and amongst the native bankers of India ; and its employment is 
referred to by Moorcroft and other travellers. When it has become 
soiled and written upon, it can be made up again and rebleached. The 
plant in question is the Ruscus aculeatus, commonly known in this 
country as butcher's broom, which is met with in considerable quantity 
in most woody districts. 
A paper read by Chevalier Claussen, at one of the meetings of the 
British Association for the Advancement of Science, on plants whieh 
can furnish fibre for paper pulp, contained some interesting infor- 
mation. 
" The paper-makers are in want of a material to replace rags in the 
manufacture of paper, and I have, therefore, turned my attention to 
this subject. To make this matter more comprehensible, I will explain 
what the paper-makers want. They require a cheap material with a strong 
fibre, easily bleached, and of which an unlimited supply may be obtained. 
I will now enumerate a few of the different substances which I have 
examined for the purpose of discovering a paper-substitute for rags, 
containing about 50 per cent, of vegetable fibre mixed with wool or 
silk, which are regarded by the paper-makers as useless to them, and 
several thousand tons are yearly burned in the manufacture of prussiate 
of potash. By a simple process, which consists in boiling these rags in 
caustic alkali, the animal fibre is dissolved, and the vegetable fibre is 
available for the manufacture of white-paper pulp. Jute, the inner 
bark of Corchorus Indicus, produces a paper-pulp of inferior quality, 
bleached with difficulty. Agave, PJiormium tenax, and banana or 
