When Silk is not Silk.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVII, Issue 8051, 19 February 1906, Page 4

When Silk is not Silk.

Half of the Bilk dresses worn by the society ladies who daily parade the fashionable thoroughfares, would, if taken together, represent a small tin mine of very fair quality. This sounds somewhat incredible, but any lady's costumier would tell you that a silk drees, unless it contained a' large quantity of substance that was not silk at all,' would be utterly shabby, greasy-looking, and showing the threads within a month or two. A piece of black silk, at many shillings a yard, was analysed by an analytical chemist some time ago, and be discovered that the precise composition was: Water, 11.43 parts; ash (mostly oxide of tin and silica), 13.30 ; real silk, 27.14 ; organic matters (not silk), 46.13 ; nitrogen, 4.76 ptirts; in all 100 parts. A piece of silk, when placed in a fire, will smoulder away like tinder, and leave a large amount of ash, the principal ingredient of which is oxide of tin. Over 1000 tons of waste are thrown away every day from' the big glassworks at St. Helens, in Lancashire. Up-to-date nearly 2,000,000 tons of coarse dust, made up of sea-sand, glass, and iron from the grinding rollers, have been dumped down as useless on vacant- Lancashire Iftnd.i- Dr. Cfrmondy took possession of a quantify of this material some time ago, ai.il converted it into blocks for having streets. To-day several of the l finest streets of Continental cities are paved with glass.