98 Vegetable Fibres Available, ete. 
a firmness and evenness of surface which, for some uses, 
suggests itself as an advantage; and causing them to 
acquire an extended adaptability for many fabrics. For 
this use its fineness and high lustre strongly recommends 
it. For warps or wefts where glassyness is the property 
sought, except a very fine yarn be required, it would bea 
less desirable material than China grass. Looking at it as 
a general substitute for cotton, besides its inherent defect 
mentioned above, the comparatively high value of flax, 
loss of weight in producing (even if produced direct from 
flax without codilla), and cost of production, would prove 
probably insuperable hindrances in face of receding prices 
of cotton; but no hindrance for the high class uses 
to which, when combed, it is adaptible. The “top” from 
the coarest flaxes being at least as valuable as the fine. 
flaxes prepared specially for cambric yarns. 
The brilliant coat and strength of the cell is much less 
liable to injury during the preparation than those of China 
grass, but the cell is brittle and has a special tendency to 
bruise. It appears to dye equally well with cotton. Has 
little felting property beyond a bruising and entangling of 
the cells. 
There still remains to be noticed the state of “flax 
cotton,” or flax separated into its filaments when perfectly 
cleansed. When it is found that an ordinary Bombay 
hemp produces a filament or flax-cotton of equal strength, 
of almost equal fineness, and for all practical uses equally 
valuable, with greater ease of production into that state, 
it will at once be seen that it is not to flax, nor even to 
codilla flax, that we must look for that class of fibrous 
material. 
(To be continued.) 
— 
THE necessity for a general depét of scientific instrumnets 
in London, where foreigners could always see and have ex- 
plained in their own language the capabilities of such 
instrument, has long been felt as a destderatum at the. 
present day. For this purpose, arrangements have been 
made by Mr. Pepper, at the Royal Polytechnic Institution, 
for receiving every scientific apparatus towards this object. 
As. we shall be in constant communication with him, 
patentees generally cannot do better than put themselves 
in direct communication with us. 
