, and then
with a solution of the mordant required to develop and fix the colour.
This method is more particularly applicable to such dye-stuffs as
camwood, cutch, logwood, madder, fustic, etc., the colouring
principles of which have some affinity for the wool fibre and will
directly combine with it. It is not suitable for the application of
the Alizarine colours. The saddening may be and is commonly done in
the same bath, that is, after the wool has been stuffed it is lifted,
the mordant--copperas, bluestone, bichrome, or alum--is added, and the
wool is re-entered into the bath. This cannot be considered a good
method of working; the shades obtained are full and deep and fairly
fast, but there is usually a considerable loss of colouring matter, as
the wool in no case abstracts the whole of the dye-stuff from the
bath; what excess is left combines with the mordant when the latter is
added, forming an insoluble colour lake, which falls down to the
bottom of the dye-vat and is wasted, or it may go upon the wool in (p. 075)
a loose, unfixed form, and cause it to rub badly and come off in
milling. Then it is rather difficult to dye to shade, much of the
result depending on conditions over which the dyer has little control.
Working as he does with dye-stuffs of unknown colouring power, which
may vary from time to time with every fresh batch of material, it is
evident that, although the same quantities may be used at all times,
at one time a deeper shade may be obtained than at another, and as it
is impossible to see what is going to be the result, and if by
mischance the shade does not come deep enough it cannot well be
rectified by adding a quantity of dye-wood to the bath, because the
mordant in the latter will prevent the colouring matter from being
properly extracted, and only a part of that which is extracted is
fixed on the wool, the rest being thrown away in the dye-bath, and
partly on the particles of wood themselves, when logwood, camwood,
etc., are used in the form of chips or powder. Dyers being well aware
of this, are in the habit when mistakes occur of bringing up to shade
with soluble dye-stuffs--archil, indigo extract, and such like.

This method, as stated above, is very wasteful, not only of
dye-stuffs, but of mordants. In no case does the wool absorb the whole
of the colouring matter from the bath, the unabsorbed portion goes
down to the bottom of the bath when the mordant is added, so that when
the dyeing