briefly referred to in his article, will be found treated of with the greater detail which their importance appears to me to demand.

merated, arising from the consumption of cord of various kinds in packing goods. Millers and other sacks may be added, and my estimate, taken rather below than above A manufacture which is instrumental in converting the actual fact, gives for the present a suitable supply, utterly valueless materials into an article not merely the adequacy of which to any present demand cannot be identified with all our commercial operations, but an doubted; what may be the future of the paper trade corabsolute necessity to civilized existence, is entitled to sequent upon the repeal of the duty and the diffusion of sustain, not only a high rank in the scale of the manu-education, can only be gathered from a reference to the facturing industry of the country, but to be emancipated | United States, where national education practically and from those galling restrictions upon its growth and prosperity, in the shape of a fiscal charge of some 30 or 40 per cent. upon the aggregate value of the manufactured article; the oppressive and unjust character of this impost will become at once apparent by considering that on the lowest article of comparative value, (paper used, for in-siderable quantity of the common kinds of paper is manustance, in packing sugar) the duty alone is 80 to 90 per cent., and upon the more valuable papers, used for correspondence and the cultivation of the fine arts, the duty is 10 to 15 per cent. It can be clearly shown to impose a very manifest limitation upon the educational resources of the country, as affecting the humbler classes in the shape of cheap newspapers, periodicals, and school books, as also upon those branches of industry of which paper forms, as it were, the raw material. I need scarcely mention paper-staining, a manufacture becoming intimately identified with the domestic comfort and elevation of the working classes, and, by the cultivation of an improving taste, tending to general social improvement.

Soliciting your indulgence for this digression, I may first remark that, the scarcity of material in 1854, inducing the somewhat equivocal offer of a reward of £1000 by the Times for the discovery of any new material suitable for paper, was in fact artificial. A little inquiry would have sufficed to show, that in the last 25 years, more especially, the supply of raw material has fully kept pace with the demand: one fact will suffice to confirm this statement viz., The paper charged with excise duty in 1836, when the rate was reduced from 3d. to 14d. per pound, was under 50,000 tons; the present production is 86,000 tons, demonstrating that the increase of population, combined with other incidental sources of supply, have prevented any very serious inconvenience from the want of raw material; and testing the argument pecuniarily (allowing for the artificial prices of commodities immediately succeeding the continental war), it may be mentioned that the rags which in 1818 were commanding £65 per ton, were at the time of the " Times panic" selling at £30. I refer to the finest quality of rags, which at all times bears a corresponding value to lower qualities. The application of chemical science, aided by mechanical invention, has contributed to the application of inferior and more abundant materials to the useful purposes of manufacturing printing and news papers, which would otherwise have been applied to the commonest kinds;nor can we fully estimate the beneficial influence produced upon the paper manufacture by the introduction of lucifer matches in substitution for that old-fashioned household necessity, the tinder-box, to which Mr. Stones only briefly alluded. It may be fairly assumed that the supply of rags from private houses has in consequence been increased 40 to 50 per cent. Let us now look at our supply of material under a fair estimate of production, taking the average production from the population arising from the consumption of all fabrics composed of cotton or linen material at 4lbs. per head, we obtain from 28,000,000 of people, say— 56,000 tons. Imported 10,000

From the mercantile marine and naval ser-
vices of the country, rope and canvas 20,000
Cotton waste, 15 per cent. upon a consump-
tion of 38,000 bales per week..
Linen waste

50,000 20,000

156,000

To produce 86,000 tons of paper, we have 156,000 tons of raw material, and a further supply of material not enu

universally prevails, and where the manufacture of paper (without any Excise Duty) is double that of England; and this tends to show that the supply of rags progresses with the growth of population and the development of the paper manufacture. It is true that in America a confactured from straw and other vegetable fibres, and that the importation of rags from Hamburgh, but more particularly the Mediterranean, and at times from Great Britain, may reach in value 3 to £400,000 per annum, yet the enormous quantity of printing paper used, and manufactured there from linen and cotton material, demonstrates my proposition of the supply of rags derivable from the population of a country being commensurate with the manufacturing requirements. In 1841 the very large supply of cotton waste, previously used only for very common papers, and for which straw is now the substitute, was applied under my assistance, and is now extensively used for printing papers, as in Europe. Nor must we overlook the circumstance that the rapid growth of the paper manufacture in America has been cotemporaneous with our own, and we see that the investment of capital in this branch of industry has never been retarded by any apprehension of the want of material.

If we look again to France, with a manufacture of 70,000 tons, a restriction existing upon the exportation of rags, and a very rapid extension of the manufacture during the last 25 years, yet the population has supplied the necessary wants of the trade, and prices range much lower than in England.

You will perceive that I concur mainly in the very correct view of Mr. Stones on this subject, and we can now enter more fully upon the circumstances which will justify the introduction of any new material in competition with rags, bearing in mind that the only circumstance that can dispense with the use of rags, will be that a possible reduction in price arising from the introduction of a cheap and abundant material may reduce the price to a minimum which will not compensate for the labour of collecting them. Or, again, that a corresponding costly material may be introduced that will yield a superior texture of paper. These are the two conditions that admit the application of a new material, and the main problem to be solved is the minimum price at which the collection of rags will cease; this I estimate at 14d. per pound, taking the average value of all rags collectively, because this price to a manufacturer of paper includes the labour of collecting and the profits of two or three trades; and in the homes of the middle and higher classes, where the rags are the perquisite of the domestics, a very low price, say a half-penny per pound, would not induce the preservation of rags. Again, as a safe proposition, I maintain that the importation of a vegetable production, expressly grown or cultivated for this particular purpose from a foreign country, will not compete with rags. The only material or vegetable substance that will maintain a becoming pretension to adoption must be of domestic growth, and produced incidentally to the growth of a more valuable commodity-as grain, for instance--the straw from which has in most countries occupied the attention of many scientific experimentalists as being the cheapest and the most abundant of any known fibrous vegetable substance; of its abundance, it may be safely asserted, that if the whole of the paper now manufactured were made from straw, it would not absorb two per cent. of the aggregate growth of the United Kingdom. The manipulations that have been during the last ten years

technic Institution, where the illustrations must of ne-
cessity be on a very small scale, when they could as
readily have seen the whole operation performed by the
inventor himself; or when Mr. Hall, whose make at the
Bloomfield iron works is a thousand tons per week, could
have tested the new process upon the largest scale, with
little or no inconvenience to the daily routine of such a
colossal establishment.
I am, &c.,

Poole, Dorset, Nov. 23.

HENRY W. REVELEY.

BROWN LIME.

advancing, and which are still advancing with a view to demonstrate practically the economy of straw as a raw material, have established a remarkable saving of power to the extent of 70 per cent., as well as the presence of a sort of natural size in straw which, aided by a very economical application of cheap vegetable size, dispenses wholly with the expensive operation of animal size as applied to writing and news papers; but as a sufficiently high degree of quality has not yet been obtained to enable straw paper to assume even a mediocre rank in the scale of prices, the economy of the manufacture has not yet been fully established, but the elaboration of the manufacture, now rapidly progressing, affords abundant SIR,-In reply to Mr. Reveley's letter on "brown promise of such results being effected (notwithstand-lime," I beg to remark that this substance is well known ing the proverbial discouragement, which the paper-in this country, and is to be found in several places in dealing trade has manifested towards new improvements), Wales. It is constantly used as a hydraulic cement by as will render it an instrument for securing that prime necessity of social life, more especially for purposes of engineers, who are well acquainted with its properties, education as well as for the extension of the now and also with some of the sources of supply. I believe ridiculously limited export trade of Great Britain, viz., that used in the Liverpool and Birkenhead Dock Works cheap paper the natural result of cheap material. is obtained in Flintshire. I myself sold a considerable I am, &c., quantity of it to Messrs. Mackenzie, Brassey, and Co., the well-known railway contractors, for the building of the viaduct across the rivers Dee and Ceiriog, on the Shrewsbury and Chester Railway. That supply was obtained from loose boulders on the Berwen range of mountains, just above the village of Llansaintfraidd Glyn Ceiriog. I believe I discovered another very large supply lately on the Kerry-hills, in Montgomeryshire.

October 27, 1856.

BESSEMER IRON.

N. N.

SIR, Mr. Gladstone is in error when he asserts that I endeavour to impute improper motives to his friends, the ironmasters. I merely stated the fact, that those It is a very impure limestone, containing much clay in gentlemen, in common with many others, from the very its substance, and to this it owes its peculiar properties. natural impulse of self-interest, are extremely averse to All limestones contain more or less of alumina in their change; a circumstance that can excite no surprise, when composition, and it is this skeleton of alumina which we reflect that the introduction of more economical pro- forms the rottenstone of commerce, after all the calcacesses and operations can be productive of no benefit reous portion has been removed. This removal is effected whatever, in a pecuniary point of view, to themselves. by nature, by means of some as yet unexplained chemical In the present instance, it is calculated that three mil-action, and the hard heavy limestone is converted into lions would be saved annually to the nation, if the Bessemer process were to turn out successful; but these millions would not pass into the pockets of the ironmasters, as Mr. Gladstone would appear to insinuate; their profits would remain much the same as they are now; and as the ironmasters are enabled to amass fortunes reckoned by hundreds of thousands, they, at least, cannot have much to complain of.

Those gentlemen are naturally averse to any change which implies trouble or expense, merely for the benefit of the consumer, and will only adopt improvements upon compulsion, by one of their number taking up a new process and underselling the others, or by the ruin of the inventor, as in the case of Henry Cort.

I do not constitute myself the champion of Bessemer's process. It must stand or fall by its own merits alone; but the projector of an improvement is not to be hunted down with impunity in these days of free discussion. There have been projectors in all times, and they have always been made subjects of ridicule; but without the assistance of those gentlemen we should still be clothed with fig-leaves, or in sheepskins, at most. In regard to the present case, I again repeat, without fear of contradiction, that Mr. Bessemer has produced ingots of malleable iron (not forged iron) without the expenditure of either labour or fuel. Let the ironmasters, if they have any wish to prevent animadversion upon their motives, repeat the new process at their own works, and thoroughly test its worth.

Mr. Gladstone speaks of the "forging process," as if Mr. Bessemer's invention was intended to supersede the necessity of that operation; while he, Mr. Gladstone, and every other man who knows anything of iron, is perfectly aware that it is impossible to produce forged iron by any other means than the rolls or the hammer.

a substance as light as cork, and resembling in colour and appearance the brown powder of a ripe puff ball.

Shortly before the death of my lamented friend, the late Professor Johnston, of Durham, I made a tour with him into Wales, in order to examine this curious substance in situ, but unfortunately death prevented the publication of the results of his interesting researches. The rottenstone occurs in large masses on the outskirts of the limestone band in the Brecon Hills, and may be there seen in all its stages of transformation.

In case any of the chemical or geological readers of the Journal should feel inclined to take up the subject of the rottenstone, I may say that one of the best places for seeing it with which I am acquainted is about two miles from the "Lamb and Flag" inn, near Ystradgynlais, in the Swansea valley. It is there collected in quantity for exportation to London, and the principal dealer lives close to the "Lamb and Flag."

I may add that the Swansea valley itself is worth a pilgrimage to any lover of grand mountain scenery. I am, &c.,

49, Pall Mall, Nov. 11, 1856.

JOHN GIRDWOOD.

Proceedings of Institutions.

CROSBY HALL EVENING-CLASSES.-Mr. Leone Levi, the professor of banking and commercial law, has been engaged to deliver a course of six lectures on the principles of banking, in Crosby Hall, Bishopsgate-street, before the Young Men's Evening Classes, to commence on the second Tuesday in January. It is probable that Mr. Levi will deliver the same course of lectures before the members of some other literary and scientific institutions in London and the vicinity.

I have already disposed of Mr. Hall's munificent offer of trial by wager, through another channel; but I can- EPSOM AND EWELL.-The Committee of the Literary not refrain from expressing my surprise, that two gen- and Scientific Institution, in presenting the fifth annual tlemen of such high standing should have attended a report, express their regret that the expenditure has lecture upon the Bessemer process at the Royal Poly-exceeded the income of the year to the amount of

PATENT LAW AMENDMENT ACT. APPLICATIONS FOR PATENTS AND PROTE CTION ALLOWED.

[From Gazette, November 21st, 1856.]

Dated 13th September, 1856.

in firearms. (A communication.)

Dated 19th September, 1856.

£21 14s. 10d., two-thirds of which deficiency is attributable to the lectures, but they believe that a little more assistance from the members would relieve them from this difficulty in future, and with this hope of co-operation they have made arrangements for an interesting succession of lectures and lecture-entertainments during 2145. John Henry Johnson, 47, Lincoln's-inn-fields—Improvements the session just commenced. Some additions have been made to the library, and the number of books issued to members has been 717. Although a diminution has taken place in the number of honorary members, the Committee congratulate themselves on the large addition to another class,-the quarterly subscribers-the list at the end of September, 1856, exhibiting an increase of at least one-half more than the number shewn at the corresponding period of 1855.

MACCLESFIELD.-The Twenty-first: Anniversary of the Society for Acquiring Useful Knowledge was held on Tuesday the 11th inst., at the Town-hall, the president of the Society, John Brocklehurst, Esq., M.P., in the chair. There was a numerous attendance on the occasion, and among the company present were E. C. Egerton, Esq., M.P., E. W. Wilmott, Esq., and Samuel Greg, Esq. After an address from the president, the secretary read the report, which states that the subscribers, both honorary and ordinary, have increased, and the library has been still further extended, by an addition of about 175 volumes. The classes are still numerously and diligently attended, the reports of the teachers being very satisfactory, and arrangements have been made for reopening the French class. The Rev. Dr. Newbold kindly gave a lecture on the Coliseum at Rome; and Mr. Walter Montgomery, in May and December, gave two of his Dramatic Recitations. The progress of the Society, since its establishment, has been very considerable. In 1855, it had an income, from all sources, of about £80; a reference library of about 20 volumes, but no circulating library. It had about twelve honorary and ninety ordinary members. Now it has an income of £700, a reference and circulating library of about 3,100 volumes, about 300 honorary and 300 ordinary members, and it has a large and commodious building of its own, with two public news and reading-rooms, and the Government School of Design is accommodated within its walls. E. C. Egerton, Esq., M.P., Samuel Greg, Esq., the Mayor of Macclesfield, the Rev. C. A. J. Smith, J. N. Brocklehurst, Esq., E. W. Wilmott, Esq., the Rev. Alexander Taylor, and other gentlemen then addressed the meeting. In the course of the proceedings the distribution of prizes to students in the classes took place.

MEETINGS FOR THE ENSUING WEEK.
MON. Royal Institution, 2. General Monthly Meeting.
Royal, 4. Anniversary.

2200.

2206.

Archibald Templeton, 7, Skinner-street, and John Lawson,
Glasgow-Improvements in the manufacture of pile fabrics.
John Underwood and Frederic Valentine Burt, Fish-street-hill
-The manufacture of copying-inks for printing.

Dated 29th September, 1856.

2276. Richard Boycott, Blaina, Aberystruth, Monmouth-An im. proved air-door.

2401.

2565.

2582.

2592.

2594.

2596.

2598.

2600.

2602.

2604.

2605.

2606.

Dated 14th October, 1856.

John Knowles, jun., St. Helens, Lancashire-An improved apparatus for the prevention of accidents in winding from mines, which apparatus is also applicable for other similar

purposes.

Dated 1st November, 1856.

Peter Smith and Thomas Irvine, Liverpool-Improvements in the masts, yards, and rigging of ships.

Dated 4th November, 1856.

William King Westly, Leeds-An' improved method of and

machinery for heckling, combing, drawing, and preparing fibrous substances for spinning.

William Edward Newton, 66, Chancery-lane-Improvements
Herbert Keeling, King and Queen Iron Works, Rotherhithe
An improvement in rivetting fish joints and other parts in
William Brindley, Moorgate-street-Improvements in the pre-
the permanent way of railways.

in steam-engines. (A communication.)

paration of paper-hangings and other ornamental papers. John Stanley, 244, Whitechapel-road--Improvements in the construction of, and mode of applying, cranes and other machines to hoisting, suspending, and lowering purposes, also in generating, transmitting, and applying motive power to the same.

William Seed, Preston, Lancashire, and William Ryder, Boltonle-Moors-Improvements in certain parts of machinery for slubbing and roving cotton and other fibrous materials. Frederic Holdway, Bayswater-Improvements in the manu

facture of candles.

2607. William Blackwell, Settle, Yorkshire - Improvements in
ploughs.
2608. Mannor Browne, Strand-Certain improvement in shirts.
2609. George Collier, Halifax-Improvements in drying, stretching
and polishing or finishing yarns.

Dated 6th November, 1856.

2610. George Henry Stevens, 14, Stafford-row, Pimlico, and Robert

Fitch, South Lambeth-Improvements in locking and unlocking jars, bottles, and other vessels, and making such vessels air-tight.

2611. Joseph La Cabra, Albany-street-Improvements in the action of pianofortes.

2612. Colin Hunter, Islandreagh, Antrim, Ireland-Improvements in effecting the operations of drying, heating, and ventilating.

Royal Institution, 7. Professor Odling, "On Organic Che- 2613. Joseph Parker, Blackburn, Lancashire-Certain improvements mistry."

in machinery or apparatus for roasting coffee, or for other similar purposes. William Henry Olley, 2, Brabant-court, Philpot-lane-Improvements in obtaining photographic impressions or pictures of microscopic objects.

James Webster, Birmingham-A new or improved instrument or apparatus for transmitting hydrostatic and pneumatic pressure, which said instrument or apparatus is applicable to pressure-guages, safety valves, thermometers, and other like machines.

Peter Cato, John Miller, jun., and John Audley, Brunswickdock, Liverpool-Improvements in the manufacture of ships' knees.

Richard Archibald Brooman, 166, Fleet-street-Improvements in the manufacture of cranked axles and shafts. (A communication.)

Frederic Chapman, Piccadilly, and Charles Bowyer, Daviesstreet-A method of purifying and disinfecting intestines. and manufacturing gelatine therefrom.

Dated 7th November, 1856.

2619. Henry Dircks, Moorgate-street-Improvements in the preparation and application of the materials for making worts and washes in brewing, distilling, and like operations, and in the apparatus connected with the same.

2620. Alexander Porecky, Hackney-Improvements in the construction of safety match or lucifer boxes.

2621. Thomas Ollis, jun., Liverpool-Improvements in machinery or apparatus for cutting paper, card-board, mill-board, scaleboard, leather, and other substances of a light nature.

2636. Thomas Walker, Balderstone, Rochdale-An improved method 2675.
of lubricating the interior of the cylinders of steam engines
for reducing the friction of the pistons thereof.

2637. Richard Archibald Brooman, 166, Fleet-street-Improvements 2677.
in preserving provisions. (A communication.)
2638. Richard Archibald Brooman, 166, Fleet-street-Improvements 2679.
in machinery for cutting and dressing stone, marble, and
similar materials. (A communication.)