_Stripping Feathers._—By soaking in warm water, containing a teaspoonful or so of ammonia water to the pint, and then carefully washing with soap and hot water, these Acid colors can be, as a rule, stripped from feathers almost entirely. This does not, to be sure, improve the original quality of the goods, but, carefully done, its bad effects are hardly, if at all, perceptible, and it enables the dyer to remedy a bad piece of dyeing, or to dye an old feather that has become faded or discolored by exposure. This, of course, does not apply to _black_ dyed feathers. After white feathers have been worn for some time they generally become soiled and yellow. If the stock was good to start with they can be immensely improved in appearance, if not made quite equal to new, by simply scrubbing them with a piece of Castile soap, in hot water, and then, after thorough rinsing, by dyeing them, in the starch-bath, with a very faint trace of blue or bluish violet. _Black Dyeing of Feathers._—This is the most difficult process in feather dyeing, and, as a rule, should be avoided by the amateur. It is impossible, so far, to get a thoroughly good black by the use of any artificial dyestuff, or any simple process. The best Acid blacks on the market, dyed with the greatest care, give a color to feathers that by themselves may look pretty well, but, when compared with first-class products, show dull and grey. The only satisfactory blacks, so far, are produced by a long and tedious series of operations, depending on mordanting for, and dyeing with, logwood. As a rule, the professional black dyer—and really good ones are few and far between—allows at least five or six days for the process, the different steps of which he usually guards as a valuable secret, which indeed it is. The writer possesses one or two of these formulas, obtained, as special marks of favor, from first-class dyers, but has never had occasion to test them thoroughly, and therefore is unwilling to publish them here. Good dyeing chemists have tried again and again to shorten and simplify the process, and have had some success. But to this day no color has been found to replace logwood, and this black dyeing of feathers is perhaps the only dyeing problem that has not as yet been satisfactorily solved with the aid of modern dyestuffs. _Painting Feathers._—Some dyers, instead of dyeing feathers, paint them. They dip the cleansed and carefully dried feather, for a moment, into a bath of oil paint, thinned greatly with gasolene. The feather is then taken from the bath, dried by waving in the air, and, when thoroughly dry, finished by beating and, if necessary, with a light dry-starching.