ON COLONIAL INDUSTRIES.

27

H.—No. 7.

PAPER MAKING. Memorandum by Mr. E. McG-lashan, M.H.R. Totjb Committee having requested me to place on record any information I could furnish in regard to the department of paper making, I have the honor to submit the following remarks: —■ As regards the Phormium tenax, this fibre is admirably adapted for paper making purposes, as will be seen from the specimens of pulp and paper exhibited by me to the Committee. The specimen of paper made at Kate's Mill, near Edinburgh, was from half a ton of green flax sent home in 1863. The report of the maker, however, was not favourable, the flax having become so dry and hard that it could not be well worked up in the state in which it arrived, and, owing to the great difficulty in bleaching it was pronounced not adapted to the better class of papers. The sample made in Melbourne was from green flax chopped up small in a chaff-cutter, but owing to the pieces being cut too small the breaking engine could not properly act on it, and hence the roughness of the sample. The following remarks in reference to this fibre is from Mr. Thomas Routledge, of the Ford "Works Company, near Sunderland, a gentleman of large experience in the paper trade, and who with great perseverance introduced the manufacture into England of the Esparto grass into paper. In a letter to me, he says, " If you put down a half-stuff plant you would, as a matter of course, work up all the flax tow, losing as it will do 40 to 45 per cent, in the boiling and washing. Reduced thus in bulk, I should think it would pay well to send home in that condition, although, owing to the yellow shelly outside which I found difficult to bleach without injuring the fibre, it will not fetch so much, I fancy, Q-) as the fibre you have sent me. It is just possible, however, that if you can obtain the tow freshly treated, you will not find this skin or shelly exterior so difficult to treat as I have done. Should this turn out so, a better material for paper making cannot well be found. I believe also that the under pulpose, apparently, matter of the leaf or blade will produce a quantity of fibrous material which it would pay to treat and export; but it is some years since I treated the Phormium tenax, and lam not quite certain about this." Mr. Simmonds, in a paper on paper-making materials read before the Society of Arts London, in January of this year, says, " Forty years ago, paper was made of the New Zealand flax, to print an edition of a work by Mr. John Murray, of Edinburgh, on the plant and its uses. The peculiarity of this paper is its tenacity, which property would make it valuable for documents and printings to stand a great deal of tear and wear. No better paper could be used for bank notes, or for the printing of valuable standard works. The paper obtained from it is the strongest of all." So far as my own experiments have gone in manipulating the tow into paper stock or pulp, I think, with Mr. Routledge, that there will not be a great difficulty in the bleaching, as my sample exhibited shows ; at all events in coloured papers any specks would not be seen, and for paperhangings and cartridge papers it would not be any serious defect. The sample of grasses exhibited in half-stuff and pulp, bleached and unbleached, were prepared by me from two varieties of grasses which grow abundantly in the Middle Island; samples of these I forwarded to Mr. Routledge, and I now give extracts from his letters to me, showing the value he places on them. He says, " I duly received your letter of 11th February, also that covering samples of prepared fibre, which is very good, and as you state bleaches very fairly ; until made into a sheet of paper, it will be difficult to say that it is superior to Esparto. It appears to be somewhat stronger, but strength is not the only characteristic of a good sheet of paper. Ido not doubt that fibre prepared equal to your sample will be worth £20 a ton laid down in England, and I shall be happy to receive all you can send, up to 500 tons, at that price. I believe, should Esparto keep up in price, that your fibre would fetch £2 to £4 more ; but it must first be tried on a working scale, and introduced to some unprejudiced makers, and then a regular and assured supply guaranteed before makers would use it. If you can assure yourself a regular supply, I believe any quantity you can manufacture would sell, as paper materials are daily becoming scarcer and dearer. I wish you had sent me some of the raw material, as I could have judged better of its amenity to treatment —I mean how it would go under the lye in boiling. I imagine, however, this material you send is what produced the small sample of bleached pulp you call Tussack grass, and, if so, it will not be so stiff or harsh in its treatment as Esparto. .. . Tour fibre bleaches far better than you think, for see the enclosed. ( 2) You must not, however, think of bleaching, but confine yourself merely to boiling, washing, pressing, &e." In a subsequent letter Mr. Routledge says, —" I have now to acknowledge yours of the 24th February, with other samples of fibre in half-stuff, ( 3) which appears to me almost identical with Esparto, although, in wetting your sample down, I judge you have given it very active chemical treatment, and, in other words, boiled it too much. I enclose some Esparto, boiled and washed, and a rawstalk, for information (*). Ido not think so well of this fibre as of that previously sent, which appears to me much stronger, and therefore that last sent not worth so much, although, should Esparto keep up in price, it might realize £20 a ton; I do not say would, but might." The testimony of Mr. Routledge and my own experiments lead me to believe that here we hare most valuable products, adapted to make the finest class of papers, and, from the fact of their abundance, must prove a great source of wealth to the Colony. In addition to the Phormium tenax and the two species of grasses alluded to, there are many other vegetable productions indigenous to the country adapted for paper making. It is unnecessary to allude to these at present, further than to say that I have prepared samples from them, which are very good, but being not so abundant, I take no notice of them. The great abundance of the flax and the grasses, as materials so well adapted for the making of paper, is what more immediately concerns the Colony, and I hold that there should be great inducements held out for the encouragement of the manufacture within the Colony itself; the more so as I find that, so far as the shipping of the pulp or half-stuff is concerned, it will not pay freight, cost of packing, and price of chemicals being too formidable an item of expense. (') Fibre prepared by me from the Poa Australis. ( 2) Sample exhibited. ( 3) From the coarse Tussaek grass of the iuterior. ( 4) Samples exhibited.