FIBRES

in botany, the principal strengthening i ues of plants, usually consisting of very long, thick-walled cells with pointed, interlocking ends. Many, such as fiax, hemp, jute, ramic, coir,and esparto, are used in the arts for spinning, or for making mats, brushes, paper, . Cotton, consisting of the seed-hairs of the cotton plant, is not a fibre in the botanical sense. FIBRES USED IN MANUFACTURE. The particular cla ification of fibres depends partly upon tbe source from which they are obtained, and partly upon the use to which ths fibres are to be put. In the former case the first division is that which separates the animal fibres from the veg stable fibres, and each of these general groups is capable of extensive subdivision. The mineral fibres would also form a cla , although a small one, in this division. In the second case, the division is considered from the point of view of the application of the fibres to wholly or partly manufactured products. Most animal and vegetable fibres, including all those of finer quality, are utilized for one or other of the textile industries, while the brush making industry, which also absorbs a considerable amount of the coarser types of animal and vegetable fibres, as well as some of the finest hairs, is capable of subdivision according to the particular operations involved. With perhaps the exception of natural silk, which is due to the coagulation of a viscous liquid as the latter emerges into the air from the orifices of the caterpillar, all the animal fibres formed originally the outer covering of the skins of various animals. There is a great variety of wools, from the softest fleece obtained from lambs and from sheep raised on rich soil, to the hard stiff hairs with which deer and similar animals are covered. From the various kinds of sheep alone is derived a very extensive range of wools; indeed, several qualities are obtained from the fieece of every individual sheep, such qualities being sorted out by the wool-sorter and de 425 FIBRES pending chiefly upon the part of the fleece from which the wool is clipped. Considered from the point of view of the fleece, there are the Australian, New Zealand, African, and American wools, each country of which provides many varieties; there are, in addition, numerous European wools, while in Great Britain alone there are varieties which include many types, from the fine valuable South Down wool to the long fibres obtained from the Leicester ficeces, and the useful wools from the highland and mountain sheep. All typical wools have a natural curl or twist, but when the fibre is straight, it is termed a hair. In this latter category one may include the outer covering of the Angora and other goats, which provide us with Mohair, Alpaca, and Cashmere, and finally the camel, cattle, and calves yield valuable hairs for the manufacture of various textile products. There is quite as much diversity, if not more, in connection with vegetable fibres, which are obtained from three distinct. sources: (a) the pod or boll, (b) the stem or stalk, and (c) the leaf. The bolls yield the short fibres of which cotton is the prototype; the second supplies us with the long soft fibres, or bast fibres, such as flax, hemp, jute, and ramie; while the long hard fibres, e.g. manila, sisal, phormntum, are obtained from leaves. Cotton fibres are really seed hairs, and they vary in length from about 1 inch to 13 inches, while the finest kinds reach 2 inches and a little over. These, as indicated, are obtained from the seed-bolls. Cotton fibres resemble closely a tube flattened centrally in the Jongitudinal direction, and they haye a@ natural twist which facilitates the spinning proce and imparts a valuable resiliency to the finished yarns. The finest and longest fibres are Sea Island and Wgyptian, but the great bulk of cotton is grown in the southern states of North America—Georgia, Vlorida, Texas, Louisiana, and several other states. A considerable quantity of cotton is grown in India, while Central Asia, Africa, and South America, help to swell the total crop. The most valuable long soft vegetable fibres are obtained from the fibrous layer of the flax plant. The stems or stalks are first pulled, then retted, and afterwards dried and broken in order to obtain the bast layer. Then follows the scutching operation, after which the fibre is ready for the first operation in the preparing department of @ flax-spinning mill. The length of the flax fibre may be anything from about. 2 feet to 3 or 4 feet. In normal times Ru ia grew and exported by far the largest quantity of flax in the world, and although the quality was 422 ‘FIBRES very good, it was inferior to that obtained from plants grown and retted in Belgium, Holland, and Ireland. Italian hemp closely resembles the lower grades of flax in finene , but it is usually much longer, coarser, and stronger than most kinds of fiax. Ru ian hemp is about the same length as flax, and is a valuable fibre for several textile products. Jute, which is also a bast fibre, is coarser still, and grows to a height of 10 to 12 feet and even more. Itis a valuable fibre for use in the manufacture of all kinds of fabrics to be used for covering and carrying merchandise; it is also largely used for the foundation of linoleum, and for the mannufacture of coal-bags and the like. Artificial sitk, or rayon, is a fibre artificially produced from wood pulp and other vegetable substances, and is of great importance industrially. (See Sink, ARTIFICIAL.) Ramie, also called rhea and China gra , is a strong fibre, but rather brittle after it has been made up into yarns for textile purposes. It is whitish in colour, is dyed easily, but eften deteriorates in use; it is also hairy, and po e es a good lustre. The chief difficulty in regard to this fibre appears to be that of decortication. One of its chief applications is in the manufacture of gas-manties, although several kinds of fabries have bees made from yarns spun from this IPE. The hard vegetable fibres, which are usually very long, are obtained from the large leaves of the agave, mus a, and other tropical plants, and cecasionally from plants grown in semitropical areas. The chief use for these fibres is in the manufacture of ropes and cordage generally. it must be understood, however, that cotton, hemp, and flax, especially the two former, are used extensively for cordage purposes as well as for the usual fine weaving yarns. On the other hand, the hard vegetable fibres are unsuitable for being introduced into fine yarns—indeed they cannot be used for this purpose—but they are admirable for the spinning of binder twine and similar coarse yarns. The best known long hard vegetable fibres are Manila, sisal, New Zealand flax or hemp (phormium), Mauritius, and bow-string hemps; the last three are leaf fibres, and must not be cenfused with the real hemps obtained from the bast layers of stems or stalks. such as Italian hemp, Ru ian hemp, Indian hemp, and Sunn hemp. Jeaves in which the hard vegetable fibres are embedded have to be scraped, either by hand or by semi-mechanical or mechanieal means, to remove the vegetable matter from the fibrous 426 FIBRIN layer. The weight of fibre removed equals only about 5 per cent of the total weight of the leaves, and hence there is a considerable number of leaves to be treated fer every ton of extracted fibre. Although Manila and sisal fibres are excellent for the rope and cearse twine making industry, they are not used in the manufacture of textile fabrics; on the other hand, the better cla of phormium (New Zealand hemp) is occasionally prepared and spun into heavy yarns, and subsequently woven ‘into comparatively coarse fabrics resembling the coarse linens made from the lower qualities of flax fibre yarns. There are several varieties of hard vegetable fibres which are somewhat similar in staple to the above-mentioned chief types, and which are used, either alone or mixed with other varieties, in the cordage industry. The fibre known as coir, obtained from the husks or outer covering of coco-nuts, is used in ths making of coarse mats and carpctings, while nettle fibre, which came into more or le prominence during the European War, and particularly in Germany, has been utilized, but is comparatively weak. The succe ful prosecution of the fibre trade depends partly upon the facilities for growing the plants, but perhaps more on the treatment which is nece ary to extract the fibre from its natural covering, while preserving the innate constituents which facilitate the subsequent proce es of preparing, spinning and weaving. In addition to the valuable animal and vegetable fibres, there are mineral fibres, the best known of which is asbestos. In its natural state, the fibre is closely a ociated with a rocklike substance, and special treatment ig nece ary to separate the hard substances from the fibre in order to make the latter suitable for conversion into yarns, and ultimately inte doth, which serves its own particular purposes in the textile world.—B1IBLioGRAPHY: F. H. Bowman, The Structure of the Wool Fibre; The Structure of Cotton Fibre; W. I. Hannam, The Textile Fibres of Commerce; J. Jackson, Commercial Botany. f FIBRIN, a peculiar organic compound substance found in animals and vegetables. Animal! fibrin constitutes the solid matter which deposits when blood coagulates, but it is also furnished by the chyle, lymph, saliva, and by pus and other pathological fluids. Fibrin is composed of carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen, and is closely allied to albumen and eageine. Itis a very important element of nutrition. In healthy venous blood there is about 2-3 per cent, but its percentage is slightly more in arterial blood. 6 is best obtained by switching newly drawn blood with a gla red or bundle of twigs, when the fibrin adheres to the rod or twigs in threads, and is purified from colouring matter by prolonged washing and kneading with water, and then by treatment with alcohol and ether to remove fat and other substances.