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70
siderable percentage of the torn up material. The
flocks fall out of the side of this machine and are
placed in bags for removal. The lighter portionfluff
and dust—is driven by the blast from the fan
along a tube into successive chambers of the
aggregate capacity of nearly 1,200 cubic feet,
divided into compartments. Means are taken to
divide and slacken the current of air entering these
chambers, so as to allow the heavier particles of
fluff and dust to settle out of the air. From the
winnowed flocks the finer suspended dust is
conveyed by a pipe which opens immediately below
the furnace bars of the boiler furnace. The organic
and noxious dust passing this tube is thereby
destroyed by combustion. Another pipe or tube
from the settling chambers passes into the chimney
shaft beyond the furnace fire, and the dust is of
necessity carried up the chimney shaft and discharged
into the open air. This is objectionable;
the whole of the residual air from the settling
chambers ought to pass through the furnace fire,
so as to ensure destruction of its combustible ingredients.
The fluffy dust deposited in the settling
chambers is periodically removed to the extent of
several hundred weight a day, packed in bags and
used as manure. It is an indescribable mass of
debris—woollen fibres, cotton fibres, other vegetable
fibres, sand and earth, spores, ova of insects, and
animal cells. Fleas abound on the premises.
The processes carried on are defective in consequence
of the inadequate size of the settling