Cooley's Cyclopaedia of Practical Receipts Volume I Part 95

3. Mix the whites of 2 eggs with a table-spoonful of spirit of wine, 2 large lumps of sugar (crushed), and sufficient finely powdered ivory-black to give the required colour and thickness, avoiding excess.

_Obs._ The above are chiefly used for dress boots and shoes. The first two are applied to the leather with the tip of the finger, or a sponge, and then allowed to dry out of the dust. The third is commonly laid on with a sponge or soft brush, and when almost dry or hard may have its polish heightened with a brush or soft rubber, after which it is left for a few hours to harden. It may also be used to revive the faded black leather seats and backs of old chairs. They all possess great brilliancy for a time; but are only adapted to clean, dry weather, or indoor use. They should all be applied to the leather as thinly as possible, as otherwise they soon crack off.

=Blacking, Har'ness.= Good glue or gelatine, 4 _oz._; gum-arabic, 3 _oz._; water, 3/4 pint; dissolve by heat; add of treacle, 6 _oz._; ivory-black (in very fine powder), 5 _oz._; and gently evaporate, with constant trituration, until of a proper consistence when cold; when nearly cold put it into bottles, and cork them down. For use, the bottle may be warmed a little to thin it, if necessary. Does not resist the wet.

2. Mutton suet, 2 _oz._; bees-wax (pure), 6 _oz._; melt, add of sugar candy (in fine powder), 6 _oz._; soft soap, 2 _oz._; lamp-black, 2-1/2 _oz._; indigo (in fine powder), 1/2 _oz._; when thoroughly incorporated, further add of oil of turpentine, 1/4 pint; and pour it into pots or tins.

3. Bees'-wax, 1 _lb._; soft soap, 6 _oz._; ivory-black, 1/4 _lb._; Prussian blue, 1 _oz._; (ground in) linseed oil, 2 _oz._; oil of turpentine, 1/2 pint; to be mixed, &c., as before.

_Obs._ The above are used by laying a very little of them on the leather, evenly spreading it over the surface, and then polishing it by gentle friction with a brush, or a soft-rubber. The last two are waterproof.

Numerous compositions of the cla.s.s are vended by the saddlers and oilmen, but the ma.s.s of them are unchemical mixtures, badly prepared, and cause disappointment to those who use them. Such is not the case with the products of the above formulae, if we may rely on the statements of those who have employed them for years. The last two are suitable for both harness and carriage leather. See b.a.l.l.s, HEEL, &c.

=BLADD'ER.= _Syn._ VES'ICA, L.; VESSIE, Fr.; BLASE, BLATTER, Ger. In _anatomy_, &c., a thin membranous sac or bag, in an animal, serving as a receptacle for some secreted fluid; appr., the urinary bladder. See CALCULUS, INFLAMMATION, RUPTURE, &c.

=Bladd'ers.= (In _commerce_.) The better qualities of these articles are prepared by cutting off the fat and loose membranes attached to them, and washing them first in a weak solution of chloride of lime, and afterwards in clear water; they are then blown out and submitted to strong pressure by rolling them under the arm, by which they become considerably larger; they are next blown quite tight, dried, and tied up in dozens. Commoner qualities are merely emptied, the loose fat removed, and then blown out, and strung up to dry. Used chiefly by druggists and oilmen to tie over pots, bottles, and jars, and to contain pill-ma.s.ses, hard extracts, and other similar substances; also in surgery, to cover wounds, sore heads, &c.--_Obs._ Bladders should never be purchased unless perfectly dry and air-tight; as, if the reverse be the case, they will neither keep nor prove useful, but will rapidly become rotten and evolve a most offensive odour. If purchased whilst damp, they should be at once hung up in a current of air, so as to dry as soon as possible.

=BLAIN*= (blane). A boil; a sore; a pustule.

=BLANC= (blong). [Fr.] In _cookery_, a dish which, according to Mrs Rundell, is formed of grated bacon and suet, of each 1 _lb._; b.u.t.ter, 1/2 _lb._; 2 lemons; 3 or 4 carrots (cut into dice); 3 or 4 onions; and a little water; the whole being simmered for a short time, with or without the addition of a gla.s.s of sherry or marsala, before serving.

=BLANCH'ING.= _Syn._ CANDICA'TIO, DEALBA'TIO, &c., L.; BLANCHIMENT, &c., Fr.; BLEICHEN, &c., Ger. A whitening, or making white; a growing white. In some cases it means decortication. See ALMONDS, BLEACHING, DECOLORATION, &c.

=Blanching.= In _cookery_, an operation intended to impart whiteness, plumpness, and softness, to joints of meats, poultry, tongues, palates, &c. It is usually performed by putting the articles into cold water, which is then gradually raised to the boiling point, when they are at once taken out, plunged into cold water, and left there until quite cold. They are subsequently removed and wiped dry, ready for being dressed.

_Obs._ The operation of blanching meat, although it renders it more sightly according to the notions of fashionable life, at the same time lessens its nutritive qualities, by abstracting a portion of the soluble saline matter which it contains, especially the phosphates, and thus deprives it of one of the princ.i.p.al features which distinguish fresh meat from salted meat. Animal food, before being dressed, may be washed or rinsed in cold water without injury, provided it be quickly done; but it cannot be soaked in water at any temperature much below the boiling-point without the surface, and the parts near it, being rendered less nutritious. Washing meat when first received from the butcher is, indeed, a necessary act of cleanliness; but soaking it for some time in water is unnecessary, and for the reasons stated should be avoided.

Strong acetic acid (concentrated vinegar) poured on or rubbed over hard lean meat gradually renders it soft and gelatinous. Ordinary household vinegar has the same effect, but in a less degree. Tough meat thus treated for a short time before dressing it becomes more tender and digestible, though somewhat less nutritious; whilst the taste and flavour of the vinegar is removed by the heat subsequently employed in dressing it.

=BLANCMANGE'.= (blo-mon_g_zh'.) _Syn._ BLANCMANGER (blon_g_-mon_g_-zha), Fr. _Literally_, white food; in _cookery_, a confected white jelly. It is commonly prepared by simmering 1 _oz._ of isingla.s.s, 2 or 3 _oz._ of lump sugar, and a little flavouring,[203] in about a pint of milk, until the first is dissolved, when the whole is thrown into a jelly-bag, and the strained liquor is allowed to cool and solidify; it is next remelted by a gentle heat, and, when nearly cold, poured into moulds, which have been previously rubbed with a little salad oil and then wiped out again.

[Footnote 203: This may be 5 or 6 bitter almonds (grated), or a little cinnamon, orange, or lemon peel, &c., at will. Sometimes these are omitted, and a little orange-flower water, rose-water, or essence of vanilla, added to the remelted jelly.]

_Obs._ Good gelatine, or strong calves' feet jelly, is often subst.i.tuted for the isingla.s.s. At other times the jelly is made with about 1/2 pint of water (instead of milk), when 1/2 pint of almond-milk, or of cream, is added to the remelted jelly. Sometimes ground rice or arrow-root is employed in lieu of isingla.s.s, when the product is called RICE-BLANCMANGE, or WEST-INDIAN B., as the case may be. TRANSPA"RENT BLANCMANGE[204] is merely clarified isingla.s.s-jelly, flavoured. See CREAM (Stone), ISINGLa.s.s, and JELLY.

[Footnote 204: A misnomer of the confectioners and cooks.]

=BLANQUETTE'= (blan_g_-ket'). [Fr.] In _cookery_, a species of white fricasee. It is also the name of a delicate species of white wine, and of a particular sort of pear.

=BLAST'ING.= In _civil_ and _military engineering_, the disruption of rocks, &c., by the explosion of gunpowder, or other like material.

=BLAST'ING POWDERS= (Melville and Callow's). _Prep._ 1. (POWDER NO. 1.) Chlorate of pota.s.sa, 2 parts; red sulphuret of a.r.s.enic, 1 part; to be separately carefully reduced to powder, and lightly mixed together, scrupulously avoiding the use of iron instruments, percussion, much friction, the slightest contact with acids, or exposure to heat.

2. (POWDER NO. 2.) Chlorate of pota.s.sa, 5 parts; red sulphuret of a.r.s.enic, 2 parts; ferrocyanide of pota.s.sium (prussiate of potash), 1 part; as No.

1.

3. (POWDER NO. 3.) Chlorate of pota.s.sa and ferrocyanide of pota.s.sium, equal parts.

_Obs._ These compounds are not permanently injured by either salt or fresh water, merely requiring to be dried to regain their explosive character.

They possess fully eight times the force of ordinary powder. One of their advantages, especially to the underground miner, is the very trifling amount of smoke produced by their explosion. On the other hand, the extreme facility with which they explode by attrition, contact with a strong acid, and a slight elevation of temperature, render them unsuited to most of the purposes of ordinary gunpowder. On this account they should only be prepared in small quant.i.ties at a time, and with the utmost caution. Mr Callow, the inventor of them, lost several of his fingers, and was rendered a cripple for life, by an explosion of the kind referred to, which occurred only a few weeks after the sealing of his patent. A straw, or small strip of wood, only slightly wetted with oil of vitriol, and applied to a small heap of the powder, produces instantaneous explosion.

Captain Wynand's 'Saxifragine' is composed of nitrate of baryta, 76 parts; charcoal, 22 parts; and nitre, 2 parts. Schultze's wood-gunpowder is composed of granulated wood treated with a mixture of nitric and sulphuric acid, afterwards impregnated with a solution of nitre. M. Baudish has invented a method by which this wood-gunpowder may be compressed into a solid substance, exerting great power and free from danger by transport.

Lithofracteur, a white blasting powder used in Belgium, is a substance similar to gun-cotton.

Messrs Nenmayer and Fehleisen's haloxylin is composed of charcoal, nitre, and yellow prussiate of potash. See GUN-COTTON, GUNPOWDER, MINING, &c.

=BLATTA ORIENTALIS.= The common c.o.c.kroach, originally imported from the East, belongs to the family of orthopterous insects; and may be cla.s.sed amongst the most offensive and objectionable of domestic pests. It is extremely voracious, not only devouring all kinds of provisions, but attacking and consequently destroying silk, flannel, and even cotton fabrics, in the absence of anything more eatable. The c.o.c.kroach is nocturnal in its habits, and exceedingly active and swift of movement. Its flattened form enables it to insinuate itself easily into crevices, and so to escape detection. The American c.o.c.kroach (_Blatta Americana_) is larger than the above. A still larger species (_Blatta gigantea_) is found in the West Indies where it is known by the name of the drummer. It is so called from the tapping noise it makes on wood, the sound so produced, when joined in by several of the creatures (as it usually is) being sufficient to destroy the slumbers of a household.

c.o.c.kroaches may be poisoned by means of wafers made of red lead, or caught by smearing a piece of wood with treacle, and floating it on a broad basin of water. When the fires and lights are extinguished they issue from their holes, and fall into the basin in their efforts to reach the bait. The c.h.i.n.ks and holes from which they come should also be filled up with unslaked lime, and some lime should also be sprinkled about the ground.

Old Gerrard says they avoid any place in which the leaves of the mullein are strewn about.

The _Blatta Orientalis_, which was formerly supposed to possess remedial powers, and was hence employed in medicine by the more ancient therapeutists, has lately found advocates for his readmission into the animal materia medica. He is reported, when made into a tincture, to act as a diuretic, and to yield a crystalline body possessed of similar properties, but in a more concentrated form. Some of the American journals report that he may be given in the form of powder or infusion (from 15 to 30 gr.) 3 or 4 times a day, in dropsy, and to increase the secretion of urine as well as of perspiration.

=BLEACH'ING=, (bleche'-). _Syn._ DEaLBA'TIO (-sh'o), INSOLA'TIO,[205] &c., L.; BLANCHIMENT, BLANCHISSAGE, Fr.; BLEICHEN, Ger. The process by which the colour of bodies, natural or acquired, is removed, and by which they are rendered white or colourless. It is more particularly applied to the decolorisation of textile filaments, and of cloths made of them.

[Footnote 205: Bleaching by exposure in the sun.]

_Hist._ Bleaching is a very ancient art, as pa.s.sages referring to it in the earlier sacred and profane writers fully testify. It had probably reached a high degree of excellence among the inhabitants of the first a.s.syrian empire, and was certainly practised in Egypt long before the commencement of written history. We may fairly a.s.sume that fine white linen formed part of the "raiment," which, together with "jewels of gold, and jewels of silver," and "precious things," Abraham sent as presents to the beautiful Rebekah and her family,[206] fully three centuries and a half before the Exodus. Subsequently, in Scripture, we have special mention of "fine linen, white and clean." Herodotus, the earliest Greek historian, tells us, that the Babylonians wore "white cloaks;"[207] and in Athenaeus we read of "shining fine linen," as opposed to that which was "raw" or unbleached.[208] At this early period, and for many centuries afterwards, the operations of washing, fulling, and bleaching were not distinctly separated. The common system of washing followed by drying in the sun, adopted by the ancients, is a process which of itself, by frequent repet.i.tion, decolorises the raw materials of textile fabrics, and thus must inevitably have taught them the art of 'natural bleaching' of a character similar to that practised in Europe up to a comparatively very recent period. And this appears, according to the authority of ancient authors, to have been the case. Washing or steeping in alkaline and ammoniacal lyes, or in milk of lime, followed by exposure in the sun, formed the chief basis of their system; whilst woollens, then as now, were treated with soap and fuller's earth, or with potter's clay, marl, Cimolian earth, or other like mineral. Urine was highly esteemed among them; and we are told that in the time of the emperor Vespasian,[209] and undoubtedly long before it, cloths were sulphured. Indeed, according to Pliny, sulphuring was often had recourse to in ordinary washing, as well as in the bleaching process.[210]

[Footnote 206: Gen. xxiv, 53; B.C. 1857.]

[Footnote 207: Herod., i, 195.]

[Footnote 208: Athen., ix, 77.]

[Footnote 209: 'Hist. Nat.,' xxv, 57, &c.]

[Footnote 210: {Transcriber's note: Footnote omitted by publisher.}]

Bleaching continued to be practised with no essential change of its principles until the discovery of chlorine, to which we shall presently refer. In the last century Holland obtained the best name for bleaching.

The process pa.s.sed then to Ireland and Scotland, and thence into England.

It was even customary to send goods from this country to be bleached in Holland. The first attempt to vie with Holland was made, in Scotland, in 1749.

The first steps towards the modern or chemical system of bleaching were the investigations of Berthollet on chlorine, in 1784, but which were not communicated to the French Academy until the year 1787. The knowledge of the use of chlorine as a bleacher was soon afterwards brought to this country by the Duke of Gordon, and by Prof. Copeland of Aberdeen, and through them was practically applied by Messrs Milnes of that place. About the same time James Watt, a correspondent of Berthollet, successfully introduced its use in the neighbourhood of Glasgow, and then generously laid a statement of the results before the Manchester manufacturers. In enforcing the importance of the new substance and process on these gentlemen, he was ably followed and seconded by Dr Henry. In 1798, Mr Charles Tennant, of Glasgow, obtained a patent for a new bleaching liquor prepared by saturating lime water with chlorine; and another, in 1799, for dry chloride of lime, a substance which is still preferred as a bleacher to all other preparations of chlorine. The new or continuous process of bleaching, as it is called, and that which is at present in general use in all the chief bleach-works of Lancashire, was introduced by Mr David Bentley, of Pendleton, and patented by him in 1828.

_Proc._ Bleaching is commonly said to be natural when exposure to light, air, and moisture forms the leading part of the process; and to be chemical when chlorine, chloride of lime, sulphurous acid, or other like substances are employed. In some cases, as with linen, the two processes are combined. The subject requires to be noticed under separate heads, depending on the material operated on:--

I. BLEACHING of =Cotton=:--Cotton is more easily bleached, and appears to suffer less from the process than most other textile substances. On the old plan it was first (1) thoroughly washed in warm water, to remove the weaver's paste or dressing; then (2) 'bucked' or 'bowked' (boiled) in a weak alkaline lye, or in milk of lime, to remove colouring, fatty, and resinous matters, insoluble in simple water; and after being (3) again well washed, was (4) spread out upon the gra.s.s, or bleaching ground, and freely exposed to the joint action of light, air, and moisture (technically called 'crofting'). The operation of 'bucking' in an alkaline lye, washing, and exposure was repeated as often as necessary, when the goods were (5) 'soured' or immersed in water acidulated with sulphuric acid, after which they (6) received a final thorough washing in clean water, and were (7) dried, finished, and folded for the market. From the length of the exposure upon the bleaching ground this method is apt to injure the texture of the cloth; and from the number of operations required is necessarily expensive and tedious. It is therefore now very generally superseded by the system of chemical bleaching briefly described below.

In the CHEMICAL SYSTEM of bleaching the goods are 'washed' and 'bucked' as on the old plan, then submitted to the action of a weak solution of chloride of lime, and afterwards pa.s.sed through water soured with hydrochloric or sulphuric acid, when they have only to be thoroughly washed, and to be dried and finished, for the entire completion of the process.

The new or continuous process, before referred to,[211] is the method of chemical bleaching at present in the most general use; and, indeed, it has nearly superseded all other methods. In this system the pieces, previously tacked together endwise so as to form a chain, are drawn, by the motion of rollers, in any direction, and any number of times, through every solution to the action of which it is desired to expose them, and this entirely and completely under the control of the operator.

[Footnote 211: See 'Hist.' (_ante_).]

The following _Table_ exhibits an outline of the several operations in the improved form of the continuous process as practised by Messrs McNaughten, Barton, and Thom, at Chorley, and in most other large bleach-works:--

1. Preliminary operations:--_a_. The 'pieces'[212] are separately stamped with the printer's name, a solution of silver, or sometimes coal-tar, being employed for the purpose.

[Footnote 212: Usually about 30 yards each.]