very regular habits. They have their office hours, their recreation hours, appointments, &c., and cannot afford to have their daily routine interfered with, by keeping the run of all the new modes of imposture, which the love of gain calls into action. Hence, the introduction of iron and other imperfect fastening for the most important parts of large ships.

TREATING FLAX.

No fabric is more beautiful than linen. For garments and drapery it had always the very highest place among rich and poor. Flax is unequaled for variety of texture, as it is made into huge cables capable of bridling a ship of war, and into threads more attenuated than those of a spider's web, for the manufacture of Belgian lace. The finer qualities of linen are very costly, and the coarser kinds much more so than cotton. This is owing to the processes through which flax is required to pass, to render it fit for those operations which separate the fibrous from the woody matter. "Fine linen, clean and white," is a term used in Scripture to denote a chaste and beautiful appearance, and assuredly there is no more beautiful fabric than fine white linen. It is rather remarkable that, although we have millions of acres in America of the finest soil for growing flax, we do not raise any worthy to be compared with that of Russia, Holland, or Tuscany, and there is not a single yard of fine linen, so far as we know, manufactured from one end of our country to the other. This is not very creditable to us, because this question is one which is as old as the establishment of our first colonies. We know that good linen may be made from American flax, because we have seen some home-made shirting made from it which was nearly as fine as the common imported qualities. A linen factory was established at Fall River, Mass., a few years since, but we have not yet seen any of its productions in the market, although thousands of yards of foreign qualities are sold daily.

Some valuable discoveries in the preparation of flax we hope will yet be made, so as to cause a complete revolution in this branch of the manufacturing arts. This was expected from the flax-cotton of Claussen, about which so much was said a few years since, but it turned out a delusion. From this, however, we have no reason to conclude that new improvements cannot be made; on the contrary, the field is more inviting than ever to the experimenter.

An improvement in this department of the arts has recently been patented in England by J. J. Cregeen, of Rotherhithe, which appears to be a move in the right direction, and may lead to important results. It is applicable to the treatment of jute, hemp, China grass, flax, and all the fibrous vegetable stalks which contain rosin or gluten. He first steeps them in hot water of 120° Fah. for forty-eight hours, after which they are washed in warm water, and during the operation are continually passed between fluted rolls. Subsequent to this they are crushed between fluted rollers that have blunt teeth on their circumference, by which action the woody matter is entirely broken, but the fibrous uninjured. After this operation, the flax is dried, and the shive, or woody substance, is easily driven off by a slight scutching in connection with a fan blast. The flax is next steeped in a tank filled with a half-formed soap composed of oil and a solution of ammonia. This steeping process lasts for about twelve hours, the heat of the liquor being maintained at 90° Fah. The flax is now taken out,

dripped, and again washed in hot water in a tank, during which operation it is also kept passing between fluted rolls until it is quite clean. By this treatment very little tow is made, the fiber is preserved in full length, and is very glossy and of a silky appearance. Jute and some other kinds of flax cannot be spun without being soaped, and a preparation of oil and soda is sprinkled upon it for this purpose, but no steeping takes place in such a liquid, as by the process described. No doubt the steeping in the hot liquors, and then in the saponaceous one, is troublesome and expensive, but it is asserted that the finer qualities of yarn can thus be made from almost all kinds of vegetable fiber.

COAL TRADE OF GREAT BRITAIN.

A recent Parliamentary paper shows that there are no fewer than 230.000 persons employed in the coal mines of Great Britain. A marked improvement has taken place in the manners and extent of knowledge of this useful body of workers, and it is gratifying to learn that in the Wakefield and Methley District a combination of the men has been made for the purpose of raising funds for investment in coal mines and other safe ventures, the proceeds of which are to provide for sickness, and such other ills, to which this class of men are more liable than some others. The necessity of means of relief in case of sickness or violent death is shown by the following figures :-In 1851, the number of lives lost was 984; in 1852, 986; in 1853, 957; in 1854, 1,045; in 1855, 963; in 1856, 1,027; in 1857, 1,119. Seven thousand and eighty lives lost in seven years.

BOTTLES TO PREVENT POISONING.

A bottle to prevent accidental poisoning has recently been patented in England. Its design is peculiar, and as it is intended solely to contain poison, there is no danger of mistaking the character of its contents. The bottles are provided with an entirely new contrivance, the effect of which is to make it impossible to pour out the contents otherwise than very slowly. The very deliberate and cautious action which is produced will, it is believed, prevent any one from taking over-doses of medicine; while it is difficult to imagine a case in which & person could pour out and take the whole contents of one of these bottles in mistake for something else.

INSOLUBLE SILICATE FOR WOOD,

There can be no doubt but the silicate of soda applied to wood renders it incombustible, and were it not soluble in water, and liable to be washed off with rains, it would be well to coat all wooden structures with it. To apply it for such purposes, and to make it insoluble is a desideratum. This can be done as follows:-Soak the articles to be coated in the silicate of soda, or if they are too large to do this conveniently, then apply it with a brush, so as to fill all the pores up. When dry, wash it with a solution of the chloride of calcium. This causes an insoluble silicate of lime to be formed in the pores of the wood, which adheres to it, and also the chloride of soda (common salt) which is washed

away.

IRON MANUFACTURES.

The important interest engaged in iron manufactures in this country, and their present depressed condition, have called for extended research into the statistics of the subject. The task was undertaken by the American Iron Association of Philadelphia. The following will give a clearer idea of the condition of the iron interest than can be formed from any statistics before made public. The report

states :

The American Iron Association has exerted itself to effect an exhaustive survey and analysis of the iron productions of the United States. It has obtained authentic statistics of the manufacture of iron in the United States and Canada, of 832 blast furnaces, 488 forges, and 225 rolling-mills. There are three principal departments of iron manufacture-the first is represented by the blast furnace and blooming forges, producing crude iron from the ore; the second, represented by forges, properly so called, turning cast iron into malleable blooms and slabs; and the third, represented by the rolling-mills, converting pig and malleable iron into manufactured shapes, ready for the mechanic and the civil engineer. The following table will show the present extent and distributions of the works in these departments, in the different States of the Union :

and

:

The various iron regions are set forth in the following summary

There are certain geographical iron centers which are wholly irrespective of international boundary lines.

1. There is the iron region of Northern New York, which formerly included Vermont, and makes its iron from primitive ores by means of forty bloomeries and a few blast furnaces, three of which are now anthracite.

2. There is the hematite and primary ore belt of the Highlands, beginning in Western Massachusetts, and running through Northern New Jersey into Pennsylvania, containing forty-four charcoal and twenty-two anthracite furnaces, and sixty forges, most of them making iron from the ore. Some of these works are of the oldest in the United States, and of Revolutionary celebrity. Yet the region itself hardly hold its own, in spite of its admirable location, in the present condition of the manufacture, owing to its ruinous proximity to the seaboard ports, glutted as they are with foreign iron.

3. Eastern Pennsylvania and Northeastern Maryland is the greatest iron region in the Union, containing, as it does, ninety-eight anthracite and one hundred and three charcoal furnaces, and one hundred and seventeen forges, none of which last produce iron from the ore. It is itself divisible into smaller areas, with distinct geographical and geological limits, affording primitive and brown hematite ores, and in the center lies its anthracite region of principal produetiveness.

4. Northwestern Virginia and Southwestern Pennsylvania constitute together a fourth much smaller iron region, with its coal measure, carbonate ores, and its forty-two furnaces, and two or three forges. Its production in the table is accidentally increased by the circumstance that the great Cambria works of Johnstown have been built within its northern limits.

5. Pennsylvania has still another and more important iron region in the northwest, including the northeastern corner of Ohio. There sixty-six furnaces have been in blast, manufacturing iron from the buhrstone and other carbonaceous ores at the northern out-crop of the great bituminous coal region. All the forging of this region is done in the rolling-mills and workshops of Pittsburg. and other centers of trade upon the Ohio waters.

6. The Ironton region, through which the Ohio River breaks above Portsmouth, contains forty-five furnaces on the Ohio, and seventeen on the Kentucky side, some of which use the coal of the mine for fuel, and all of them the ores of the coal measures for stock.

7. The old iron making region of Middle and Eastern Virginia, a prolonga tion of the Pennsylvania region across the Potomac, supplied with the same brown hematite and magnesia ores, contains sixteen furnaces in its division east of the Blue Ridge, only one of which is in blast, and thirty furnaces west of the Blue Ridge. It has also thirty-five forges.

8. In the northern part of East Tennessee, and northwest corner of North Carolina, is seen a knot of forty-one bloomery forges and nine furnaces, using the hematite and magnetic ores of the highland range; while to the west of them, at the base of the Cumberland Mountain, and on the out-crop of the fossiliferous "dyestone" ore of the upper silurian rocks, are fourteen forges and five furnaces. In the southwestern corner of North Carolina are five forges of the same kind, and further to the east is a belt through the center of North Carolina, passing over the line of a few miles into South Carolina, consisting of twenty-seven forges and five furnaces. There is also a small iron region in Northern Georgia, along the line of the Chattahooche, which passes over into Alabama. This whole country possesses an incalculable, inexhaustible abundance of the richest ores, while its production of iron still remains at a minimum.

9. There is as yet but one principal iron region in the far West, that of Western Tennessee and Western Kentucky, with its peculiar ores, and forty-five furnaces, and six or eight forges; but

10. In Missouri a beginning has been made with the Iron Mountain as a center, and there already exist seven furnaces, in blast upon brown hematite and primitive ores.

This exhibit makes evident the great mineral wealth of this country.

STATISTICS OF AGRICULTURE, &c.

SUGAR CROP OF LOUISIANA.

The sugar crop of Lousiana, according to the annual tables of Mr. P. A. Champomier, has been very large. It is by parishes, as follows:

The crop is only exceeded by the one of 1853. This table shows the extent of the sugar crop in this State for the last sixteen years :

The value of this year's crop. at an average of seventy-five dollars per hogshead, is nearly twenty-eight millions of dollars, besides the value of the molasses, amounting to about one-fourth of the above sum, making an aggregate of thirtyfive millions of dollars; all, with the exception of one million, the product of our own State industry. The last season was highly favorable to the growth and early maturity of the cane, and had it not been for the damage from crevices on the Mississippi and Lafourche, and the reduced culture in the upper portions of the State, the crop would have reached nearly 430,000 hogsheads. In respect to the coming crop, the reports from the various parts of the State are favorable, with the exception of those from Iberville and parishes from thence down the Mississippi, apprehensions existing that the ratoons will not turn out well.