The Manufacture of Paper

Abstract

THE author is well known as a specialist and a worker in this branch of technology, and, of course, in a treatise of nearly 300 pages, could not fail to deal, in an interesting way, with some critical problems of the industry. But this contribution to the subject, which is of deep, wide, and varied interest, hardly commends itself as a spontaneous effort in relation to its literature. From our brief but “brotherly” examination of its contents we are led to surmise that it owes its origin to mixed motives, such as would operate in the case of a publisher's “specification” adopted by the author, not as a call or inspiration illuminating as well as defining his task, but rather as a condition of a contract to be fulfilled. This somewhat artificial basis is already indicated in the pointless preface, in which the author first records some very obvious convictions, as to the complementary relations of engineer and chemist in this industry. But these are not applied as material to any purpose or plan of the present work, which is otherwise introduced in a paragraph of faint praise as follows:—

The Manufacture of Paper.

By R. W. Sindall. Pp. x + 275. (London: A. Constable and Co., 1908.) Price 6s. net.