FEATHERS. The principal uses to which feathers are applied are for personal decora tion, as plumes for ladies' head-dresses, or for the hats of military officers ; as a soft and highly elastic material for filling beds, cush ions and pillows ; or, in the case of the larger _quill-feathers, as writing-pens, or small tubes for the manufacture of hair-pencils, or similar purposes.
Of the various kinds of feathers employed as plumes for head-dresses the most important are those of the ostrich. They are first washed in a lather of white soap and water, and sub sequently in warm clear water. They are bleached by three successive operations : first with water only, then with a little indigo, and then a little sulphur. The feathers are then dried by hanging upon cords, dining which they are shaken from time to time to separate their fibres. To increase their pliancy, the ribs are scraped with a bit of glass cut circu larly; and, to impart the requisite curly form to the filaments or fibres, the edge of a blunt knife is drawn over them.
Feathers have long been used as a stuffing for beds and pillows ; goose feathers especially. Goose feathers are divided into white and gray, the former being deemed the most valu able. The less valuable kind of feathers, known by the general name of poultry feathers, are obtained from turkeys, ducks, and fowls. Wild duck feathers are both soft and elastic, but their value is impaired by the great diffi culty of removing the disagreeable odour of the animal oil which they contain. Various methods are practised of cleansing feathers from their oil, principally by the use of lime or lime-water ; but Mr. Herring has introdu
ced a method of purifying feathers by steam, which is said to be very efficacious. The soft. est and finest kind of feathers employed for bedding are those from the breast of the eider duck. [Einna-Down.] Of the quills of feathers employed for pens, those from the goose are most used. One among many modes of preparing them is the following :—A workman sits before a small stove fire, into which he thrusts the barrel of the quill for about a second. Immediately upon withdrawing it from the fire, he draws it under the edge of a large blunt edged knife, called a book, by which it is forcibly compres. sed against a block or plate of iron heated to about Fehr. By this process the barrel, which is rendered soft and elastic by the heat, is pressed fiat, and stripped of its outer mem brane, without danger of splitting. It springs back to its natural form, and the dressing is completed by scrubbing with a piece of rough dog-fish skin. The principal workman em ployed in this operation can pass 2000 quills through his hands in a day of ten hours. By whatever process the external membrane is re moved, that inside the quill remains, shrivelled up in the centre of the barrel, until it is cut open to convert it into a pen.
Foreign feathers were imported to the fol lowing values, in four recent years, viz. :— 5,2791. in 1816, 4,2371. in 1847, 4,089/. in 1818, and 5,096/. in 1819.