Too Long; Didn't Read

During the last ten years there has been an enormous increase in the production of these preparations, and the time will come when their application in dyeing and calico printing will become so general as to completely supersede the employment of the raw materials. The manufacture of these extracts, to be thoroughly successful, requires to be so conducted as to secure the perfect exhaustion of the dyewoods without the slightest destruction or deterioration of the coloring matters contained in them; and though nothing like perfection has been reached in the attainment of these objects, it is certain that the processes of extraction and evaporation now employed by the best makers are a very great improvement on the older methods. Indeed, there is no difficulty nowadays in procuring dyewood extracts of high excellence if the consumer is willing to pay a price for them corresponding to their quality, and knows how to avail himself of the aid of chemical skill to control his purchases. Unfortunately, however, there is so much hankering after cheap articles, and so little care is taken to ascertain their real quality, that every scope is afforded to the malpractices of the adulterer. There are many dye and print works in which large quantities of these extracts are used without being subjected to trustworthy tests. Moreover, much of the testing is done by fallacious methods and often by biased hands. So fallacious, indeed, are some of these tests, that grossly adulterated extracts are often declared superior to the purer ones, the cause of this being the application of an insufficient proportion of mordant in the dyeing or printing trials, and the consequent waste of the excess of coloring matter in the case of the purer preparation.