A Tin Dress.

Manawatu Herald, 3 February 1898, Page 2

A Tin Dress.

A very unusual subject of analysis — a lady's silk dress — is reported by an English chemist, Dr. T. L. Phipson, as having been brought recently to his laboratory. In the course of his work it developed that much ot the material was not silk at all, and that much of the foreign substance was oxide of tin, making the fabric richer than much poor tin ore from Cornwall, and demonstrating the fact that the silk dresses seen daily on London's fashionable thoroughfares represent, taken together, a Cornish mine of very fair quality. It proved, moreover, that the material — instead of lasting a lifetime, as pure silk was once supposed to do — would not continue presentable three months if worn every day. These are the figures of the analysis: Water, 1 1 '43 ; ash (mostly tin oxide and silica), 14*30; real silk, 38*14; organic matters, etc., not silk, 46*13. A serious assertion, it is added, is that the "weighted" silks of France, Germany and Switzerland, which grow shabby in a few weeks, are even preferred by the public, as fashions change so rapidly that better material is useless.