The following slight sketch of the manufacture of calf-kid will serve to illustrate the practical manufacture of the finer alumed or “white” leathers. The raw material is in England mostly large market-calf, though salted and dried skins are sometimes employed. After sufficient soaking or washing in water, they are limed without arsenic or other sulphides, in limes which must not be allowed to grow stale or putrid, until the hair can be easily removed. After unhairing and fleshing in the usual way, they receive a few days in a pretty fresh lime, in order to plump them, and are then freed from lime gradually but as completely as possible, by successive steepings and washings in water softened by a mixture of that already used on other goods and by working on the beam. This acts as a partial substitute for puering with dung, which is now no longer used on calf-kid. The goods are next drenched in the ordinary way, 3-4 % of bran being used, and the goods allowed to rise two or three times in the drench, which should be conducted with the usual precautions (p. 167) to avoid the danger of butyric fermentation in hot weather. The goods should come out of the drench free from lime, and unswollen by acid, but full, white, and soft. The tanning (or “tawing” as it is usually called in the case of alumed goods) is done in a rotating drum with a mixture of alum or sulphate of alumina, salt, flour, egg-yolk, and olive oil. About 5 per cent. of flour, 2·5 per cent. of alum, 1 per cent. of salt, the yolks of 25 eggs, or 1¹⁄₂ lb. of preserved egg-yolk, 2 oz. of olive oil, and 1¹⁄₄-1¹⁄₂ gallon (12-15 lb.) of water are required per 100 lb. of wet pelt. The flour is first made into a smooth paste with a little water, the egg-yolk, somewhat diluted with warm water and strained, is mixed in together with the oil, and finally the alum and salt solution is added at such a temperature as to bring the whole mixture to blood-heat (38° C.). The length of drumming depends on the thickness of the skins, several hours being required for very thick ones, but care must be taken to stop and ventilate the drum at frequent intervals, so as to prevent the skins becoming hot by friction. This part of the process was formerly accomplished by treading with bare feet in a tub. After tawing, the goods are allowed to lie in piles over-night, or are sometimes laid in tanks for a day or so with any that remains of the tawing paste, to complete the absorption of the salt and alum, and are then frequently split with the band-knife machine, though it would be better, as is often done on the Continent, to split them before tawing, the materials of which are not only costly, but unfit the splits for many purposes for which they might be employed. The drying should be rapid, but is best done first at a moderate temperature, or in the open air, and then in a rather hot stove. They may now be allowed to “age” from one to three months, but it is usually