The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1854-04-25 00:00:00

CHEAP MATERIAL FOR PAPER.

THE necessity of providing a cheaper and more
abundant supply of materials for the manufacture
of paper, than is at present furnished, is a subject
which is interesting to the paper-maker, the mer-
chant, the agriculturist, the scientific man, and
also every consumer of paper. We copy the follow-
ing from The Gardeners' Chronicle :
The wants of paper-makers can only be satisfied by
the production of more raw material. That material can
be as well provided in our own fields as by foreign impor-
tation, and we believe as abundantly. Whether, how-
ever, we can grow paper materials as cheaply as they may
be imported is a question to be answered by no other
means than by experiment. Country gentlemen, living
near paper mills, are those by whom the experiment
should be tried. It cannot cost much ; their gardeners
are the men to conduct it ; and now is the time to set
about it.

The problem to solve is, whether it is more profitable
to grow an acre of corn, of root crop, or of paper materials P
Paper materials are vegetable fibre. All plants con-
sist largely of this substance, but in some it is more
abundant than in others, or more separable, or finer, or
of a better colour. Those plants will be best suited for
the purpose in question in which it is most abundant,
most separable, finest, and whitest.
We are surrounded by suitable plants, but they are not
cultivated. Nettles and Mallows in particular are well
known to possess the requisite qualities; so does the
Spanish Broom, and probably the Common Broom; any
of these thrive in poor soil, where better crops cannot be
produced,

The common Stinging Nettle is an example of what we
mean. Its roots can be procured everywhere ; and as it
is perennial it will not only keep itself sufficiently clean,
but may be cut two or three times a year. The principal
coA consists in collecting its roots for planting, rent, &c.,
of land, and the labour of cutting and preparing. Its
bre is very fine and good ; scarcely inferior to hemp, and
has been used in Germany in the manufacture of first
',class paper.. Fishing lines and cordage of good quality
are also said to have been prepared from it. Wherever
anything can grow, there the nettle is at home; no bad
seasons hurt it ; no neglect injures it ; and it is subject
to neither blight nor mildew, nor the ravages of insects.
A larger produce may, no doubt, be had from the
Hemp-leaved Nettle (Miura cannabina). This plant
does not sting ; its stems .grow 5-6 feet high, and it is
perennial, like the laSt. But it can only be obtained
sparingly in botanic gardens, and therefore is not imme-
diately available.
Mallows are to be 'tad everywhere ; and from them a
white fibre is procurable in abundance. We do not find
that it has been employed in paper-making, but its fibre
is known to have been used for cordage. The best spe-
cies, we imagine,Tor a trial would be one of the annual
Mallows ; either the curled-leaved (2lfalva crispa) or the
Zebra Mallow Of mauritiana), seed of both which is
easily procurable of the great seed merchants. These are
well known to gardeners, because of their being cultivated
as ornamental plants ; they grow 6-8 feet high, and
come quickly to hand. They might be drilled in rows
eighteen inches apart, and six inches asunder in the rows.
As to the common Broom, it is worth ascertaining
whether it may not be cut profitably for its fibre. Its
near relative, the Spanish Broom (Spartiunz junceum), is
repo-116d to yield a very good substance without much
trouble. So much of the former is to be found among
plantations in poor sandy districts, that there can he no
difficulty in procuring enough -for a fair trial. It will
only be necessary to cut it close in now, so as to force the
bushes to produce plenty of young wood, which should,
we imagine, be collected for the fibre, as soon as the woad
shows the first signs of beginning to ripen.
It is by no means improbable, indeed, that many other
neglected plants may be turned to similar account, by
enlightened experimentalists; for there is no doubt that
-we are surrounded by wealth which we cannot recognise,
and which never will be appreciated till "common things"
are understood as well as 'useless rarities. In fact, there
is now before us a sample of fibrous matter, produced in
great abundance near Belmullet in Ireland, for which we
have to thank Mr. Billington. He does riot say what the
plant is from which it was obtained, but he states that it
will grow very luxuriantly in cold bleak situations where
other crops refuse to thrive, and it seems to us to be very
much more easily convertible into paper than white wood
of any kind.

If, as we imagine, the object of the cultivator is to
obtain the greatest „amount of money-out of land at the
smallest possible expense, we venture to submit the above
considerations to our country friends. For ourselves, we
would as soon grow an acre of Thistles as an acre of Pota-
toes, if we could obtain as much profit ; and this, although,
like all other speculations, it belongs at present to what
Mr. Justice Manic happily calls the -" regions of indis-
tinctness," seems to us a subject extremely well worth
careful investigation.

A correspondent of the Bristol Mirror, in
detailing "a peep into a straw paper mill," near
Tovil, in Kent, gives the following particulars :

All our readers are doubtless aware that straw is a
hollow tube, and the ladies know that in bonnets at least
it has a beautifnl glaze on the outside, but they are not
perhaps aware that that glaze is in :reality an extremely
minute film of glass, so that a straw is a bundle of small
fibres glued together, and lining the inside of a glass tube,
of which it is the object of the paper-maker to deprive it.
To effect this, and leave the fibres of it as free as possible,
the straw previously cleaned and.-cut in short lengths is
boiled in a strong solution of soda ley, which dissolves
both the glass: and the glutinous substance. We look for
a moment into a vast cauldron, whence issues a smell of
stale hay, and- a-cloud of hot steam, _and cannot say that
we have seen the process of boiling, but, declining to put
our head further in, follow our conductor to where another
large boiling Nat is being emptied into a little waggon, to
be carried to the bleaching pits, dose by. It looks not
• unlike the spent tan from the tanpits, and is almost as
dark, and we -are puzzled how that dirty-looking heap is
ever to be made into strong sheets of white paper, when
we are referred to a large tank at the end of the room,
where some hundredweights of chloride of lime are dis-
' solved, in some thousands of gallons of-water, and account
at once for the smell pervading the -whole mill. The
brown mess in the little waggon being uow wheeled on
two rails, over one of the bleaching pits, is emptied into
it, and a gutta percha syphon tube - being put into the
bleach liquor the pit is filled up with it, and left for
twenty-four hours, by which time the ;chlorine and the
colour of the straw will have fought -se fiercely as to be
worse than the celebrated Kilkenny cats, for not a vestige
of either remains. We don't wait for that, however, but
go down to the mill, properly so called, e., the place
where the bleached and boiled straw is ground into a pulp.
Here is an oval trough, a sanguinary -machine, full of
knives, is revolving rapidly, while the -straw passing
through it, and-round the trough, and .through it again
and again, is rapidly reduced to a substance somewhat
resembling curdled milk, and having an addition of smalt
or ultramarine,' looks very like the sky-blue of our school
days left till next morning. Here also the-tize, a com-
pound of soda and rosin, is added to it (without which it
would be blotting paper). Let us leave it to its insatiable
tormentor to go 'back to the room we first entered ; but
here we fancy -we must fail to give much ',idea of the
machine—suffice it to say, the pulp from tbe-mill, still
looking like curdled sky-blue, being kept in-A-constant
state of agitation,•,by agitators who, strange to-say, do
not do mischief to the hands they work among, is run
into a small trough,-with a slit at the 'bottom' through
which the pulp floss on to a kind of round :towel,
made of wire gauge, where it parts with sonte,of its
water, and which, .travelling over its rollers, .steadily
carries it of a uniform thickness over a square trough,con-
nected with a pump, Which suck most of its water.thr4ugh
the wire gauze, and with the help Of some hundredweights
of air above presses itinto something like solidity. Now
it wants all the sharpness of our eyes to follow its. move-
' ments, as it first goes -under rollers, looking likelarge
rolls of flannel, then along -travelling blankets, up to the
ceiling and down to the-floor, and in and out, and wound
end round, under one hot railer of copper, and over another,
:And at last emerges from-the end a web of paper, some five
-feet wide, and capable of going on from here to Edinburgh
If required. It don't go to 'Etfinburgh, though at least not
in its present state, but passing into the cutting machine
:is-divided into three strips therein, and then cut off at
sstated lengths, by a sort of horizontal guillotine, falling
into the hands of three boys in the universal paper caps,
to'be carried away presently into the pressing and sorting
TOOlll9, where a number of women, after examining the
sheets and rejecting the faulty ones, pack them in quires
and reams for the market.

It forms a paper somewhat harder and slightly, more
brittle than the best rag papers, but admirably adapted for
printing on, as from those very qualities the type indents
it less than the more flexible and tougher rag paper, than
which'it is moreover cheaper.

INDIA:SIIBSTITUTES FOR RUSSIAN HEMP.-At the
last meeting of the Society of Arts, Dr. Forbes Boyle read
a paper on "Indian fibres fit for textile fabrics, or for rope
and paper making." He stated that in the white-fibred
plants, such as the bowstring hemp, the aloe, the pita-fibre,
the pine apple, and, above all, the plaintain, we had bound-
less resources of material not only for paper making, but
for cordage, which would rival Manilla hemp, or the Ameri-
can aloe which bridged over broad rivers. The .oakum of
these plants might be converted into paper, and the fibres
into fabrics of different qualities ; and; though they might
not be fitted for making knots,.they would yet make ropes
which were capable of bearing considerable strains. Among
the malvaceous and leguminous plants, or those among
which the brown hemp and " sunn " of India were found,
with the jute among the linden tribe, we had a variety of
cheap products, because the plants could be grown with
ease and their fibres separated with facility. If we re-
quired fibres possessed of all the strength of Russian or of
Polish hemp, we should find this property not only in the
hemp of the Himalays, but in the various nettles which
clothed the foot of these mountains, from Assam to the
Sutlej. One of the latter—the rheea fibre—he felt assured
would not only undersell every other fibre, but in point of.
strength would take a position second to none of all the fibres
at present imported. Some of this fibre had been made into
a 5-inch rope and had been tried at Messrs. Huddart's
rope manufactory, where it was found that each square
inch made from the wild rheea bore in the first experiment
8441 b; in the second experiment 8941 b, and that from the
rheea fibre, 9101 b ; while the average strength of rope made
with thebest hemp, and after numerous experiments, from
the year 1803 to 1808, was 8051 b per square inch. In
December last some experiments mere made at the East
India Company's military stores, with fibres in equal
weights and of equal lengths. The weight that each fibre
broke with was ascertained to be as follows :—St. Peters-
burg hemp, 160th; Jubbulpore hemp, 1901 b; Wuckoonar
fibre, 1751 b ; mudar, or yercum fibre (common all over
India), 1901 b ; China grass, 2501 b ; rheea fibre, 3201 b ;
wild rheea, from Assam, 3431 b; and Kote Kangra hemp
no breakage at 4001 b. This hemp was the cannabis satira
of botanists, and was cultivated in every part of India on
account of the intoxicating property of its leaves. Dr
Boyle stated, in conclusion, that the Court of Directors
had ordered 20 tons of the rheea fibres, as well as of the
Himalayan hemps, to be sent here yearly for the purpose
or having them tried. A vast "lumber of specimens of the
different, fibres, and of the articles manufactured from
them, have been left gt the Society of Ms for a few days
for inspection. •

BIRTHS, MARRIA.GES, and DEA2S

BIRTHS.

On the 9th inst., the-wife of the Rev. Cyrus Morrair of
son.

On the 14th inst., at Irvine-street, Edge-hill, the wife of
'tbe Rev. J. B. Lowe, of a ,daughter.
•On the 14th inst., the wife of Mr. Benjamin Eastwood,
jun., of a son and heir.

- On the 16th inst., at Santander, Spain, the wife of Mr.
Morland Jee, civil engineer, of this town, of a daughter.
On the 16th inst, in Duke-street the wife of Mr. James
Steel, of a son.
Op the 16th inst., Viscountess Barrington, of a son and
heir.

On the 17th inst., at the Grove, ;Orton, Mrs A. D.
Anderson,of a daughter.
On the 18th inst., the wife of Mr. Joseph Godden,
surgeon, Oxton, of a son.

On the 1. 9th inst., Mrs. Samuel Peck, Poplar-road,
Oxton,of a SO2l.

On the 19th inst., the wife of Mr. Eugene Husson, of a
son.

On the 20th inst., the wife of Mr. Francis WDonald, of
Park-lane, of a daughter.
On the 20th inst., at the residence of her father, P.
W. Braneker, Esq., Field House, Wavertree, the wife of
John W. Nicholi Came, D.C.L., and Barrister-at-Law, of
Dimland Castle, South Wales, of a son.
On the 113 inst., at Eengelly House, the wife of me. E.
Dommett, head master .of Hele's School, Exeter, of a son.

TEE LONDON GAZETTE.

TUESDAY, APRIL 18, 1854.

;BAN nurrs.—J. H.. T. Y.'Hughes, Westbourne-grove,
Bayswater, chemist.—J. ISurnmarsell, Little York-place,
St. Marylebone, carpenter.—H. Anstey and W. Walton,
(not Watson, as in last Friday's Gazette), C. Bramer,
Sheffield, wood dealer.
P,AatTNERSIIIPS DISSOLVED. --- Saxton and Simpson,
Manchester, carvers and gilders. Crook and Fawell,
Bolton4le-Moors, grocers.—Mavrogordato and Co., London
and dlsewb.ere, merchants.
DICTU' DS.—May 10, J. Kay, Prestwich, near Man-
chester' .calico manufacturer„—kay 16, R. Rutherford,
'St.4lion's, Newfoundland, and Manchester, merchant:
PAYMENT OF DIVIDEND. Mellor, Manchester,
innkeeper, first div. of ls; on Tuesday, May 2, and any
subsequent Tuesday, at the office of Mr. Pott, Manchester.
CERTIFICATES.--May 10, W. Hart, late of Manchester,
London, Preston, Bangor, and Chester, tanker.—May 10,
J. Kay, Prestwich, near Manchester, calico manufacturer.
INSOLVENT DEBTORS.—To be heard at Liverpool, April
24 : Mary Travis, Lancaster, teacher ; G. Bowes, Liver-
Pool, grocer ; T. O'Neill, Liverpool, tailor.; R. Fletcher,
,Liverpool, tin-plate worker; Margaret tiontield, Liver-
pool, furniture broker,