REPLY TO MR L. CLAPHAM.

Feilding Star, Volume X, Issue 117, 9 April 1889, Page 2

REPLY TO MR L. CLAPHAM.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE STAR. Sir, — Our attention has been called to a letter in your paper of March 12th, signed Lambert Clapham, in which he states we claim the first double drum action machine which has been before the public. What we claim is this : Our double action scraping machine has two drums with scrapers, and we Bcrape both aides of the leaf at the same time ; and we say no other machine has been before the public that will extract the gum and coloring matter, and leave the fibre intact, within 50 per cent, of the Premier Machine, as all that is required, after the flax has left the machine, is to dry the fibre and scutch it, and it is ready for market, the fibre being then white, soft, and silky. [ AlloY me to inform Mr Clapham that I have had the double drum bruising machine at work in Foxton nineteen years ago, when I was Engineer and Manager to C. J. Pownell, Esq., and my 1 experience in the flax industry is not of yesterday, and we further challenge Mr Lambert Clapham, or any one in New Zealand, to produce a machine that has been at work before we patented our machine, that will produce flax within 50 per cent, in value as our machine will produce. — Wo are, &c, J. H. Davidson, Per Davidson & Gough, Patenters. Dunedin, April sth, 1889.