Jute Fibre appears under the microscope as bundles of tendrils, each being a cylinder, with irregular thickened walls. The bundles offer a smooth cylindrical surface, to which the silky lustre of jute is due, and which is much increased by bleaching. By the action of hypochlorite of soda the bundles of fibres can be disintegrated, so that the single fibres can be readily distinguished under the microscope. Jute is coloured a deeper yellow by sulphate of aniline than is any other fibre.
[CHAPTER II.]
MATERIALS USED IN PAPER-MAKING.
Raw Materials.—Rags.—Disinfecting Machine.—Straw.—Esparto Grass.—Wood.—Bamboo.—Paper Mulberry.
In former days the only materials employed for the manufacture of paper were linen and cotton rags, flax and hemp waste, and some few other fibre-yielding materials. The reduction of the excise duty, however, from 3d. to 1½d. per lb., which took effect in the first year of Her Majesty's reign—namely, in 1837—created a greatly increased demand for paper, and caused much anxiety amongst manufacturers lest the supply of rags should prove inadequate to their requirements. Again, in the year 1861 the excise duty was totally abolished, from which period an enormously increased demand for paper, and consequently paper material, was created by the establishment of a vast number of daily and weekly papers and journals in all parts of the kingdom, besides reprints of standard and other works in a cheap form, the copyright of which had expired. It is not too much to say, that unless other materials than those employed before the repeal of the paper duty had been discovered, the abolition of the impost would have proved but of little service to the public at large. Beneficent Nature, however, has gradually, but surely and amply, supplied our needs through the instrumentality of man's restless activity and perseverance.
The following list comprises many of the substances from which cellulose, or vegetable fibre, can be separated for the purposes of paper-making with advantage; but the vegetable kingdom furnishes in addition a vast number of plants and vegetables which may also be used with the same object. We have seen voluminous lists of fibre-yielding materials which have been suggested as suitable for paper-making, but since the greater portion of them are never likely to be applied to such a purpose, we consider the time wasted in proposing them. It is true that the stalks of the cabbage tribe, for example, would be available for the sake of their fibre, but we should imagine that no grower of ordinary intelligence would deprive his ground of the nourishment such waste is capable of returning to the soil, by its employment as manure, to furnish a material for paper-making. Again, we have seen blackberries, and even the pollen (!) of plants included in a list of paper materials, but fortunately the manufacturer is never likely to be reduced to such extremities as to be compelled to use materials of this nature.
Raw Materials.
Cotton rags.