and all derive their motion from the mighty engine, which, firmly seated in the lower part of the building, and constantly fed with water and fuel, toils through the day, with the strength of a hundred horses.* Men, in the mean while, have merely to attend on this wonderful series of mechanism, to supply it with work, to oil its joints, to check its slight and infrequent irregularities; each workman performing, or rather superintending, as much work, as could have been done by two or three hundred men, sixty years since."

NOTHING places in a more striking light the vast improvement which has taken place in the mechanical arts, since the era of Arkwright, than the condition of paper-machine factories.

Till within the last thirty years, the linen and hempen rags, and other materials from which paper was made, were reduced to the pasty state of comminution, requisite for this manufacture, by washing them with water, and setting the mixture to ferment, for many days, in close vessels, whereby they underwent, in reality, a species of putrefaction. It is easy to see that

*The moving power of a modern factory, besides its proper tasks of picking, carding, roving, spinning, weaving, &c., does a great deal of miscellaneous drudgery. For example: it raises the coals from their bins in the yard, by a sloping series of buckets, like those of a dredging-machine for deepening rivers, and delivers them on an elevated railway platform, into a wagon, through the drop-bottom of which they are duly distributed among a range of hoppers, attached to the furnace-feeding machines. It also carries the work-people upwards or downwards, to any floor of the factory to which their business may call them. Movable platforms are constructed, capable of holding half a dozen persons, and enclosed in upright tunnels through which they move.- Ure.

the organic structure of the fibres would be thus unnecessarily altered, nay, frequently destroyed. The next method employed was, to beat the rags into a pulp, by stamping rods, shod with iron, working in strong oak mortars, and moved by water-wheel machinery. So rude and ineffective was the apparatus, that forty pairs of stamps were required to operate a night and a day, in preparing one hundred weight of rags. The pulp or paste was then diffused through water, and made into paper, by methods similar to those still practised in the small handmills.

About the middle of the last century, the cylinder or engine mode, as it is called, of comminuting rags into paper pulp, was invented in Holland, which was soon afterwards adopted in France, and at a later period in England and America.

The first step in the paper manufacture is, the sorting of the rags into four or five qualities. They are imported into this Country and England, chiefly from Germany, and the ports of the Mediterranean. At the mill, they are sorted again, more carefully, and cut into shreds by women. For this purpose, a table frame is covered at top with wire cloth, containing about nine meshes to the square inch. To this frame, a long steel blade is attached, in a slanting position, against whose sharp edge the rags are cut into squares or fillets, after having their dust thoroughly shaken out, through the wire cloth. Each piece of rag is thrown into a certain compartment of a box, according to its fineness; seven or eight sorts being distinguished. An active woman can cut and sort nearly one hundred weight in a day.

The sorted rags are next dusted, in a revolving cylinder, surrounded with wire cloth, about six feet long and four feet in diameter, having spokes, about twenty inches long, attached at right angles to its axis. These prevent the rags from being carried round with the case, and beat them, during its rotation, so that, in half an hour, being pretty clean, they are taken out, by the side door of the cylinder, and transferred to the engine,

to be first washed, and next reduced into a pulp. For fine paper, they should be previously boiled, for some time, in a caustic lie, to cleanse and separate their fila

ments.

The rags are washed and reduced to pulp, by means of a machine, sometimes called a stuff-engine, which consists of a cylinder, furnished, on its circumference, with short knives or teeth, which, as it revolves, act against another set of knives, that are fixed to a block,the rags being, at the same time, mixed with running water, and confined within a box that contains the revolving cylinder.

The operation of grinding the rags requires nice management. When first put into the washing engine, they should be worked gently, so as not to be cut, but only powerfully scrubbed, in order to enable the water to carry off the impurities. This effect is obtained, by raising the cylinder upon its shaft, so that its teeth are separated considerably from those of the block. When the rags are comminuted too much in the washer, they would be apt to be carried off in part, with the stream, and be lost; for, at this time, the watercock is fully open. After washing in this way for twenty or thirty minutes, the bearings of the cylinder are lowered, so that its weight rests upon the cutters. Now the supply of water is reduced, and the rags begin to be torn, at first, with considerable agitation of the mass, and stress upon the machinery. In about three or four hours, the engine comes to work very smoothly, because it has, by this time, reduced the rags to the state of half-stuff. They are then discharged into a large basket, through which the water drains away.

The bleaching is usually performed upon the halfstuff. At the celebrated manufactory of Messrs. Montgolfier, at Annonay, near Lyons, France, chlorine gas is employed for this purpose, with the best effect upon the paper, since no lime or muriate of lime can be thus left in it; a circumstance which often happens to English paper, bleached in the washing-engine by the in

troduction of chloride of lime among the rags, after they have been well washed for three or four hours by the rotation of the engine. The current of water is stopped, whenever the chloride of lime is put in. From one to two pounds of that chemical compound are sufficient to bleach one hundred weight of fine rags; but more must be employed for the coarser, and darker colored. During the bleaching operation, the sliders are put down in the cover of the cylinder, to prevent the water getting away. The engine must be worked an hour longer with the chloride of lime, to promote its uniform operation upon the rags. The cylinder is usually raised a little, during this period, as its only purpose is to agitate the mass, but not to triturate it. The water-cock is then opened, and the washing is continued for about an hour, to wash the salt away; a precaution which ought to be better attended to than it always is, by paper manufacturers.

The half-stuff, thus bleached, is now transferred to the beating-engine, and worked into a fine pulp. This operation takes from four to five hours; a little water being admitted, from time to time, but no current being allowed to pass through, as in the washing engine. The softest and fairest water should be selected for this purpose; and it should be administered in nicelyregulated quantities, so as to produce a proper spissitude of stuff for making paper.

For printing-paper, the sizing is given in the beating-engine, towards the end of its operation. The size is formed of alum, in fine powder, ground up with oil; of which mixture, about a pint and a half are thrown into the engine at intervals, during the last half hour's beating. Sometimes a little indigo-blue or smalt is also added, when a peculiar bloom color is desired. The pulp is now run off into the stuff-chest, where the different kinds are mixed; whence it is taken out, as wanted. The chest is usually a rectangular vessel of stone, or wood lined with lead, capable of containing three hundred cubic feet, at least, or three engines full

of stuff. Many paper-makers prefer round chests, as they admit of rotary agitators.

When the paper is made in single sheets, by hand labor, as in the older establishments, a small quantity of the stuff is transferred to the working-vat, by means of a pipe, and there properly diluted with water. This vat is a vessel of stone or wood, about five feet square and four deep, with sides somewhat slanting. Along the top of the vat, a board is laid, with copper fillets fastened lengthwise upon it, to make the mould slide more easily along. This board is called the bridge. The maker stands on one side; and has, at his left hand, a smaller board, one end of which is made fast to the bridge, while the other rests on the side of the vat. In the bridge opposite to this, a nearly upright piece of wood, called the ass, is fastened. In the vat, there is a copper, which communicates with a steampipe to keep it hot; there is also an agitator, to maintain the stuff of a uniform consistence.

The moulds consist of frames of wood, neatly joined at the corners, with wooden bars running across, about an inch and a half apart. Across these, in the length of the moulds, the wires run, from fifteen to twenty per inch. A strong raised wire is laid along each of the cross-bars, to which the other wires are fastened; this gives the laid paper its ribbed appearance.

The water-mark is made by sewing a raised piece of wire, in the form of letters, or any figured device, upon the wires of the mould, which makes the paper thinner in these places. The frame-work of a wove mould is nearly the same: but, instead of sewing on separate wires, the frame is covered with fine wire cloth, containing from forty-eight to sixty-four meshes per inch square. Upon both moulds a deckel, or movable raised edge-frame, is used, which must fit very neatly; otherwise, the edges of the paper will be rough.

The workman, provided with a mould, dips up a portion of the pulp, and holds it in a horizontal direction, shaking it gently. This is a very delicate operation;