Dried and dry-salted goods need a soaking still more prolonged, up to one week if water alone be used. With the assistance of caustic soda, however, the process can be shortened to about two days. The first soak liquor should consist of a 0.1 per cent. solution of caustic soda, and after the goods have been inserted twenty-four hours, they will be materially improved by a few hours' drumming or paddling. Another caustic soda soak will complete the process. Sodium sulphide crystals may replace caustic soda, but about three times the weight will be needed. Carbonate of soda and caustic lime also are a convenient commercial substitute for caustic soda. For 10 lbs. caustic soda, use 36 lbs. carbonate and 7 lbs. lime. Extra lime should be added in all cases when the water is hard. Acid liquors will also soften dried and dry-salted goods, but such processes do not fit in so well with the subsequent liming. The use of putrid soaks and stocks may be now considered out of date. =Liming= follows soaking, and consists essentially in immersing the hides for 7-10 days in milk of lime. The chief object in view is to loosen the hair and prepare for its mechanical removal. Liming takes place in pits, the tops of which are level with the limeyard floor. The lime is slaked completely and mixed well with water in the pit, being particularly well plunged just before the insertion of a pack of goods. Saturated limewater is only a 0.13-per-cent. solution. The goods are occasionally "handled" _i.e._ hauled out of the pit and reinserted after plunging ("hauling" and "setting"). This is necessary to keep the liquor saturated with lime. The hides are inserted one by one, each being "poked down" to ensure its contact with the liquor. The goods are invariably immersed first in a previously used lime liquor. Most tanneries now carry this out in a systematic way, so as to ensure regularity in the process. As the goods are large and heavy it is less laborious to carry out the whole process in one pit. In this "one-pit system" the goods are inserted for (say) four days in an old used lime liquor, with occasional handling; this liquor is then run to the drain and a new liquor made up in the same pit, into which the goods are inserted for (say) five days. They are then hauled and sent to the unhairers. Each pack thus gets two liquors, old and new.