But the case with regard to textiles made from vegetables fibers is quite different; upon materials made from cotton, flax, jute, or other fiber of the vegetable kingdom, the new aniline colors cannot be fixed without the assistance of other bodies acting the part of mordants. Some of these bodies are actively poisonous in their nature, and introduce a possible element of danger to the wearer of the dyed article. For many years, almost the only method of dyeing cotton goods with the aniline colors consisted in a preliminary steeping in sumac or tannic acid, followed by a passage in some suitable compound of tin, and subsequent dyeing in the coloring matter. Sumac and tin have been used for two hundred years or more as the dyer's basis for a considerable number of shades of color from old dye-stuffs; there never has been the least suspicion that there was anything hurtful in colors so dyed. Sumac or tannic acid, in combination with alumina, may be held to be equally inoffensive; now it is a fact that the great bulk of cotton goods are dyed with the aniline colors by the agency of these harmless chemicals. But of late years the dyers of certain goods, and the calico printers generally, have found an advantage in the use of tartar emetic, and other compounds of antimony, to fix aniline colors; besides this, some colors are fixed in calico printing by means of an arsenical alumina mordant; it need not be mentioned that antimony, as well as arsenic, is, when administered internally, an active poison in even small quantities, and that externally both are injurious under certain conditions. An alarmist would require nothing further than this statement to feel himself justified in attributing everything bad to fabrics so colored; but the practical dyer or calico printer knows that though he employs these poisonous bodies in his business, and that some portion of them does actually accompany the dyed material in its finished state, not only is the quantity excessively small, but that it is in such a state of combination as to be completely inert and innoxious. In the case of tartar emetic, it is the tannate of antimony which remains upon the cloth, a compound of considerable stability, and almost perfectly insoluble in water; in the case of a few colors fixed by the arsenical alumina mordant, the arsenic is in an insoluble state of combination with the alumina, in fact, the poisons are in the presence of their antidotes, and not even the most scrupulous manufacturer has any fear that he is turning out goods which can be hurtful to the wearer. Persons quite unacquainted with the process of dyeing are apt to think that goods are dyed by simply immersing them in a colored liquid and then drying them with all the color on them and all that the color contains; they do not know that in all usual cases of dyeing a careful washing in a plentiful supply of water is the final process in the dye-house, and that nothing