liquid required in the alkaline-hydrolytic treatment of vegetable textiles, and where advantageous to bring the treatment down (or up) to a process of steaming with the active agent dissolved in a minimum proportion of water relative to the cloth. This concentration of effect is of importance in flax cloth, and especially linen treatment, where the peculiarly resistant cutocelluloses have to be attacked and a considerable proportion of waxy by-products to be removed. These points are the basis of the special process of Cross and Parkes [Engl. Pat. 25,076/ 99] for steaming flax (and cotton) goods with an emulsion containing, in addition to the special hydrolysing agent--caustic soda--mixtures of soap with 'mineral' or other oils, the presence of which effectually aids the removal of the by-products in question. A complete system on these lines is now working on the industrial scale in the Belfast district. The results are not merely economical in largely reducing the number of alkaline boiling treatments required on the old plan of pan or 'pot' boiling, but are visible in the strength and finish of the linens so treated. For cotton bleaching the costs may be put down at a fraction of those of the Irish linen bleach. The economical advantages of the new system are obviously less in relation to the lesser total costs. But there are other points which have come into more prominent influence. The mechanical wear and tear on the cloth is considerable in the ordinary process, more especially in the mangle-washes. As a result the adjustment of warp and weft is more or less disturbed. These defects are absent from a system which operates on the cloth in a fixed position. But as we are mainly concerned with the purely chemical factors we cannot pretend to deal with textile questions. We have to notice the remaining element of chemical economy as it involves a fundamental principle. The practice of washing residues or products of reaction free from reagents and soluble by-products involves a well-known mathematical law, under which the rate of purification is a function rather of the _number_ of successive changes of washing liquid than of the volume of the latter. The ordinary practice of textile washings entirely ignores this principle, and the consumption of water in consequence may reach many thousand times the economic minimum. With supplies of water often in indefinite excess of requirements, even in this most wasteful method, bleachers are in no need to consider the question of consumption. But leaving aside particular and local considerations of advantage the fact is that the new system gives control of the practice of washing, enabling the operator to adapt an important element of the daily routine to a fundamental principle which has been almost universally ignored.