It is harsher to the touch, and its colour varies from grey to brown; it combines directly with the greater number of the organic colouring matters, removing them from solution, i.e., becoming dyed with them; it is coloured deep yellow by immersion in a solution of aniline sulphate; moistened with a solution of phloroglucol and afterwards with hydrochloric acid, it gives a deep red coloration; with pyrrol also in presence of hydrochloric acid it gives a deep carmine colour; it is attacked and partially converted into soluble products by a number of reagents which have no action, under similar conditions, upon cellulose. Certain of these we must consider more in detail. _Iodine._—Jute absorbs iodine from its solution in potassium iodide. This action is characteristic of all lignified tissues, the quantity of iodine taken up being proportional to the amount of lignification. If the physical conditions remain the same, the amounts of iodine absorbed will be found to be constant for each particular fibre. This constancy points to the formation of a definite chemical compound, probably resembling the blue compound of starch and iodine. This property may be made available for the estimation of the {18} amount of mechanical wood-pulp in papers; it will be more fully considered elsewhere. _Bromine._—Jute, exposed to the action of bromine water in the cold, combines with the halogen, being oxidised at the same time, and the products may be dissolved by boiling the modified fibre in weak alkaline solutions. On repeating this treatment four or five times, a residue of cellulose is ultimately obtained, amounting to 72 or 73 per cent. of the original fibre: the cellulose is obtained in the form of the disintegrated fibre elements. On allowing the halogen to act in presence of an alkali, _i.e._, as hypobromite, not only is its action intensified and accelerated, but its _modus operandi_ more clearly revealed. The chief products are in this case, carbonic acid, bromoform CHBr_{3} (which may be isolated by distillation), and cellulose. At the same time the yield of cellulose is considerably less than by the former method, the cellulose itself being attacked by the hypobromite.