Goose feathers are most esteemed for beds, and they are best when plucked from the living bird, which is done thrice a year, in spring, midsummer, and the beginning of harvest. The qualities sought for in bed feathers, are softness, elasticity, lightness, and warmth. Their only preparation when cleanly gathered are a slight beating to clear away the loose matter, but for this purpose they must be first well dried either by the sun or a stove. Bleaching with lime water is a bad thing, as they can never be freed from white dust afterwards.
The feathers of the eider duck, anas mollissima, called eider down, possess in a superior degree all the good qualities of goose down. It is used only as a covering to beds, and never should be slept upon, as it thereby loses its elasticity.
Quills for writing. These consist usually of the feathers plucked out of the wings of geese. Dutch quills have been highly esteemed, as the Dutch were the first who hit upon the art of preparing them well, by clearing them both inside and outside from a fatty humour with which they are naturally impregnated, and which prevents the ink from flowing freely along the pens made with them. The Dutch for a long time employed hot cinders or ashes to attain this end; and their secret was preserved very carefully, but it at length transpired, and the process was then improved. A bath of very fine sand must be kept constantly at a suitable temperature, which is about 140° F.; into this, the quill end of the feather must be plunged, and left in it a few instants. On taking them out they must be strongly rubbed with a piece of flannel, after which they are found to be white and transparent. Both carbonate of potash in solution and dilute sulphuric acid have been tried to effect the same end, but without success. The yellow tint which gives quills the air of age, is produced by dipping them for a little in dilute muriatic acid, and then making them perfectly dry. But this process must be preceded by the sand-bath operation. The above is the French process.
Quills are dressed by the London dealers in two ways; by the one, they remain of their natural colour; by the other, they acquire a yellow tint. The former is called the Dutch method, and the principal workman is called a Dutcher. He sits before a small stove fire, into which he thrusts the barrel of the quill for about a second, then lays its root quickly below his blunt-edged knife called a hook, and, pressing this firmly with the left hand, draws the quill briskly through with his right. The bed on which the quill is laid to receive this pressure is called the plate. It is a rectangular smooth lump of iron, about 3 inches long, 11⁄2 broad, and 21⁄2 thick, which is heated on his stove to about the 350th degree Fahr. The hook is a ruler of about 15 inches in length, somewhat like the patten-makers’ knife, its fulcrum being formed at the one end by a hook and staple, and the power of pressure being applied by the hand at the other end. The quill, rendered soft and elastic by the heat, endures the strong scraping action of the tool, and thus gets stripped of its opaque outer membrane, without hazard of being split. A skilful workman can pass 2000 quills through his hands in a day of 10 hours.
They are next cleaned by being scrubbed by a woman with a piece of rough dog-fish skin, and finally tied up by a man in one quarter of hundred bundles.
In another mode of dressing quills, they are steeped a night in decoction of turmeric, to stain them yellow; taken out and dried in warm sand contained in a pot, then scraped by the Dutcher as above described. The first are reckoned to make the best pens, though the second may appear more beautiful.
Crow quills for draughtsmen, as well as swan quills, are prepared in the same way. The quills plucked from well-fed living birds have most elasticity, and are least subject to be moth-eaten. The best are those plucked, or which are spontaneously cast in the month of May or June, because they are then fully ripe. In the goose’s wing the five exterior feathers only are valuable for writing. The first is the hardest and roundest of all, but the shortest. The next two are the best of the five. They are sorted into those of the right and the left wing, which are differently bent. The heaviest quills are, generally speaking, the best. Lately, steaming for four hours has been proposed as a good preparation.
FECULA (Fecule, Fr.; Stärkemehl, Germ.); sometimes signifies corn flour, sometimes starch from whatever source obtained.
FELSPAR (Orthose, Fr.; Feldspath, Germ.) is a mineral crystallizing in oblique rhomboidal prisms, susceptible of two cleavages; lustre more pearly than vitreous; spec. grav. 2·39 to 2·58; scratches glass; yields no water when calcined; fusible at the blowpipe into a white enamel; not affected by acids. The liquid left from its analytical treatment with nitrate of baryta, nitric acid, and carbonate of ammonia, affords on evaporation an alkaline residuum which precipitates platina from its chloride, and appears from this, as well as other tests, to be potash. Felspar consists of—silica, 66·75; alumina, 17·50; potash, 12; lime, 1·25; oxide of iron, 0·75. Rose. This mineral is a leading constituent of granite; and in its decomposed state furnishes the petuntse or Cornish stone, so much used in the porcelain and best pottery manufactures.