“so ' 
7 sh, 
. ; 
firmly planted in our natures. Animals by nature while 
away their life in happy forgetfulness of the past, and enjoy 
the fleeting hour thoughtless of the future. Man is en- 
dowed with experience, reflection, and a knowledge of 
duty ; and it is evidently intended that these faculties shall 
lead and restrain both those instincts given him in common 
with animals, and also those intellectual instincts—if one 
may coin the word—which are added to animal impulses. 
650 Vegetable Fibres Available for 
AN INQUIRY INTO VEGETABLE FIBRES 
AVAILABLE FOR TEXTILE ARR 
BY H. SHERWOOD. 
(Concluded from page 488.) 
if N concluding this Inquiry, we have now to consider 
the separating of vegetable fibres by means of fer- 
mentation, and lastly, by means of super-heated steam. 
The first is an attempt to regulate the operation of 
retting, so as to produce the fine state of separation occa- 
sionally observed in over-retted flax, without its attendant 
diminution of strength. To effect this, the time of expo- 
sure to the action of the fermenting agent is shortened, 
and the agent is employed largely in excess of that con- 
tained in ordinary vegetable substances. The results are, 
in many respects, superior to those obtained from any of 
the hackneyed modes of treatment. : 
The objections reasonably raised to this mode are a great 
uncertainty of operation, and an incompleteness of separa- 
tion. Many of the substances desired to be removed are 
liable to be only partially converted into a soluble state. 
In this partially converted state they are even more in- 
capable of solution than they were before operating upon. 
They become gelatinous, and though perfectly softened by 
heat and moisture, it is only to agglutine the cellular fibres 
even more firmly together when again dried. 
But probably a portion only of this feature is due to this 
cause alone: Some of the substances desired to be re- 
moved from cellulin are not affected by any fermentation ; 
these present a similar appearance under the influence of _ 
heat and moisture. A familiar example of these substances 
