United States or Liechtenstein ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


The burning fire of wood, coal, or gas; the preparation of food to excite and to satisfy the appetite; the change of minerals into the iron, steel, copper, brass, lead, tin, lighting burning and lubricating oils, dye-stuffs and drugs of commerce; the change of the skins, wool, and hair of animals, and of the seeds and fibres of plants, into clothing for human beings; the manufacture from rags, grass, or wood of a material fitted to receive and to preserve the symbols of human hopes, fears, aspirations, love and hate, pity and aversion; the strange and most delicate processes which, happening without cessation, in plants and animals and men, maintain that balanced equilibrium which we call life; and, when the silver cord is being loosed and the bowl broken at the cistern, the awful changes which herald the approach of death; not only the growing grass in midsummer meadows, not only the coming of autumn "in dyed garments, travelling in the glory of his apparel," but also the opening buds, the pleasant scents, the tender colours which stir our hearts in "the spring time, the only pretty ring time, when birds do sing, ding-a dong-ding": these, and a thousand other changes have all their aspects which it is the business of the chemist to investigate.

Even he felt the exigencies of France to be so fierce that, by a system of licenses, certain privileged traders were permitted to secure the supplies of dye-stuffs and fish-oil essential to French industries by exporting to England both wine and wheat in exchange.

Dye-stuffs were originally gotten almost entirely from animal or plant material. At present the great majority of them are made in the laboratory, and in not a few cases they not only imitate the color of the older material, but actually have identically the same composition and constitution. The laboratory-made material is exactly like that made by the animals or the plants.

With bare and sinewy arms they beat up and down in tiresomely monotonous stroke the long-handled dashers of cedar churns standing in the wide, open "entries" of the "double-houses;" they arrayed their well-scalded milk crocks and jars where the sun's rays would still further sweeten them; they plied swift shuttles in the weaving sheds; they toiled over great, hemispherical kettles of dye-stuffs or soap, swinging from poles over open fires in the yard; they spread out long webs of jeans and linen on the grass to dry or bleach, and all the while they sang sang the measured rhythm of familiar hymns in the high soprano of white women sang wild, plaintive lyrics in the liquid contralto of negresses.

Oilseeds, as flax for linseed, are largely exported. The cultivation of wheat has been greatly improved, and all the grains are raised. In the Himalayas, on the borders of China, teas are grown under European direction; and you will excuse me if I suggest that they are better than those of 'the central flowery nation. Dye-stuffs, indigo, and lac are noted for their quality and their quantity.

One merchant advertised some 125 packages of fine dress goods from the East in a long and alluring list anticipating the great celebration over the arrival of the railroad; another firm, whose specialty was "drugs, paints, oils, dye-stuffs, groceries," offered its wares "for cash or barter, as cheap if not cheaper than they can be procured west of Detroit."

These can be brought at wholesale from dealers in chemicals and dye-stuffs at much cheaper rates than by the small paper from the druggist. The ordinary copperas, which can be bought at any country store, gives a fast nankeen-coloured dye, and this is very useful in making a dull green by an after-dip in the indigo-tub.

In 1862 there was an International Exhibition in London; and those who remembered it and its predecessor of 1851 have declared that the case of aniline dye-stuffs for by that time quite a number of new pigments had been discovered excited at the later the same attention as that given to the Koh-i-noor at the earlier.

"But Mr Rugg will not open his packs here; we want nothing," said Shenac Bhan, "unless he may have dye-stuffs for my mother." "He has no dye-stuffs you'll get that at The Eleventh," said Shenac Dhu; "but it's nonsense about not wanting anything. I'll venture to say that Mr Rugg will leave more here than he left at our house, or at any house in the town-ship. I wish he would come."

The imports of linens, silks, paper, wines, brandy, fruits, dye-stuffs, and drugs.