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CALICO-PRINTING.

white calico to be printed. The hanging rollers e are laid across joists fixed near the roofof the apartment above the printing shop,, the ceiling and floor between them being openbar work, at least in the middle of the room. Their use is to facilitate the exposure,and, consequently, the drying of the printed pieces, and to prevent one figure being daubedby another. Should they come to be all filled, the remainder of the goods must be foldedlightly upon the stool d.

The printer stretches a length of the piece upon his table a b, taking care to placethe selvage towards himself, and one inch from the edge. He presents the blocktowards the end, to determine the width of its impression, and marks this line A b, bymeans of his square and tracing point. The spreader now besmears the cloth with thecolor, at the commencement, upon both sides of the sieve head; because, if not uniformlyapplied, the block will take it up unequally. The printer seizes the block in his righthand, and daubs it twice in different directions upon the sieve cloth, then he transfers itto the calico in the line A B, as indicated by the foyr points abed , corresponding tothe four pins in the corners of the block. Having done so, he takes another daub ofthe color, and makes the points a b fall on c d , so as to have at the second stampa' b', covering a b and C d'; and so on, through the rest, as denoted by the accented let-ters. When one table length is finished, he draws the cloth along, so as to bring a newlength in its place.

The grounding-in, or re-entering ( rentrage ), of the other colors is the next process.

• The blocks used for this purpose are furnished with pin-points, so adjusted that, whenthey are made to coincide with the pin-points of the former block, the design will be cor-rect ; that is to say, the new color will be applied in its due place upon the flower or otherfigure. The points should not be allowed to touch the white cloth, but should be made tofall upon the stem of a leaf, or some other dark spot. These rentrages are of four sorts -1. One for the mordants, as above ; 2. one for topical colors; 3. one for the application ofreds; and, 4. one for the application of resist pastes or reserves. These styles havesuperseded the old practice of pencilling. ,

The Perrotine is a machine for executing block-printing by mechanical power; anait performs as much work, it is said, as 20 expert hands. I have seen its operation, h*many factories in France and Belgium , in a very satisfactory manner; but I havereason to believe that there are none of them as yet in this country. Three woodeblocks, from 2J to 3 feet long, according to the breadth of the cloth, and from 2 toinches broad, faced with pear-tree wood, engraved in relief, are mounted in a powercast-iron frame work, with their planes at right angles to each other, so that eacof them may, in succession, be brought to bear upon the face, top, and hack oisquare prism of iron covered with cloth, and fitted to revolve upon an axis betweensaid blocks. The calico passes between the prism and the engraved blocks, a ^receives successive impressions from them as it is successively drawn through by _winding cylinder. The blocks are pressed against the calico through the agencysprings, which imitate the elastic pressure of the workman’s hand. Each block recei ~a coat of colored paste from a woollen surface, smeared after every contact wimechanical brush. One man, with one or two children for superintending the co ,giving surfaces, can turn off about 30 pieces English per day, in three colors, wis the work of fully 20 men and 20 children in block printing by hand. It eMd ~some styles of work to which the cylinder machine, without the surface rotter,inadequate.