Morning journal and courier., 1883-03-27

water in few minutes and the fish would eat it of. In fact don't know but what 1t would be good bait. Most so-called gut leaders are made from silk and the best from @ marine plant.
 ''All the work of making gut strings is about the same, but greater care has to be exercised in preparing those intended for musical instruments than others. The pro- cess of manufacturing those is comparatively simple, but far from easy. When the en- trails, for which good price has to be paid. are thoroughly cleaned. they are split with razor. Only one half is fit for use in violin strings. That is the,upper or smooth half. The lower half is fatty, rough, and of une- qual thickness The strips are put through rollers turned by hand for eight or nine days, to take ali the stretch out of them. Then they are spun or twisted. Five or six strands go to make an E string, eight or nine an A string, and twenty are put into D string. Then they go through 8 bleaching bath of sulphur fumes. After that they are twisted again. Then they are softened in pearlash water. again subjected to the action of the sulphur fumes, twisted again, dried, and finally rubbed down smooth with pumice stone. Altogether it takes ten or eleven days to make 8 string. When done they are each seventy-tw inches long-four lengths for violin-and thirty of them coiled separately and tied together make up the bundle of the trade. We can make
 
 that come from Saxony or any other part-of Germany, and very much better than any that are made in France, but we cannot com pete with the best Italian strings in point of quality. Except in the latter, not more than one in three will be absolutely correct and equal in tone throughout; but there is one maker in Italy who, by some secret process of his own, secures and guarantees perfect accuracy throughout for every string he makes. He does not make more than sixty or one hundred bundles g. year, but his strings command ten dollars per bundle here cost that to the importer-while other Ital- ian strings are worth cnly $3 or $4, and oth- CTS only $1.50. The Italian makers have one great advantage-that the raw material is thin, fine, free from fat, and evenly smooth all around, so that they can use the whole instead of having to split it, as we must. That gives to their completed strings dura- bility and evenness that we cannot attain. No gut harp strings are made in this country.
 "A good many B strings now used on vio lins in this country are made of steel wire. That is the finest string and most liable to break The wire is, of course, the most dur able by far, but it lacks the tone of gut string. Perhaps the strongest recommenda ton in favor of wire strings is that they can be furnished for about fifteen cents a dozen. I The frequency with which gut strings are softened by precipitation on the fingers and broken during play in the summer time has caused the very general adoption of silk strings for use during the months of July and August. They have not so good tone as the gut, but are better for use in that sea- son. The manufacture of them is protected 1 by 40 per cent. duty, but great quantities l are imported as gut. You could hardly | tell them from gut Indeed don't know that l myself could with certainty.
 ''Heavy belting string is made from beef en- l trails, and some of it brings as much as fifty 1 R-- T..x to be so particular about getting fine light | color as we are when making musical instru- | ment strings. Musicians cannot be made to | understand that the dark strings are the | most durable and best, but such is the fact. Perhaps some of them may know it, but, all the same they have the common American preference for the prettiest thing, whether it is really the best or not"