RUSSIA GREEN.
I. Scour the feathers as usual and rinse well. Prepare a bath slightly acidulated with sulphuric acid, add two per cent., of the weight of feathers, acid green and one per cent. aniline navy blue dissolved in warm water and filtered acid, according to sample, some filtered decoction of turmeric or solution of fast yellow. Dye at 170° F. to shade, lift rinse and dry with starch.
II. Have the feathers well cleaned and rinsed. Prepare a bath twenty per cent., of the weight of feathers, new green, eight per cent. canarine, sixteen per cent. aniline blue black, sixty per cent. alum, and one-quarter litre sulphuric acid (for two and a half pounds of feathers). Bring the bath to a brisk boil, then chill with cold water, enter the feathers and work them for one hour; finally sadden and tone by adding some decoction of fustic and of logwood. Lift, rinse, squeeze, starch and dry.
III. Prepare a sharp hot bath with a little sulphuric acid; add Guinea green, according to shade, and tone by the addition of indigo carmine and turmeric; for very deep shades add also some nigrosine or fast blue-black, dissolved and filtered. Enter as hot as the feathers can be handled, work for one half hour; then raise the temperature slowly to near the boiling point and dye to shade.
The bath for deeper shades being not exhausted can be preserved for further use, refreshed by suitable additions of dyestuffs as required, but caution must be used as regards the subsequent additions of sulphuric acid, that not so much be added as to injure the feathers.
For Russia green, especially the darker shades of it, naturally gray and even black feathers can be used unbleached.