THE 
RICH NOLOGI ST: 
A RECORD OF SCIENCE. 
o—= 
JANUARY, 1867. 
—?0--—- 
PRACTICAL PAPER MAKING. 
No. 1.——SIZING IN THE. PULP, 
HE improvements to be introduced into the French 
method of sizing, in order at least to equal that 
which is practised in Holland, had from 1806 excited the 
solicitude of the “Société d‘Encouragement,” which as early 
as that year offered a prize of three thousand francs. The 
essays received in this competition, not having satisfied the 
conditions required, although the government had doubled 
the prize, and the reunion of Holland to France, having 
given hopes that we might obtain an easy knowledge of 
the processes in use among our neighbours, induced the 
society, upon the advice of its committee on chemical arts, 
to withdraw the offer of this prize, and charge a necessary 
commission with the work of making the special researches 
for the attainment of this object. 
MM. D’Arcet and Merimée were the commissioners ap- 
pointed, and were for five years successively engaged in this 
important labour. They obtained precious results not 
merely in regard to sizing after the paper is made, but also 
with reference to sizing in the pulp. that is to say, at the 
time of making the paper. It was in 1815 that M. Meri- 
meée made a report in the name of the commission, in which 
after having set forth the advantages they had obtained, 
the commission proposed to keep its processes secret, and 
communicate them only to those manufacturers who might 
wish to try these processes, and who should engage them- 
selves to communicate to the society. This proposition was 
NEW SERIES.—VOL. I. Z 
