d all the brown linen, then
largely manufactured in Scotland, to Holland to be bleached. It was sent
away in the month of March, and not returned till the end of October,
being thus out of the hands of the merchant more than half a year.

The Dutch mode of bleaching, which was mostly conducted in the
neighbourhood of Haarlem, was to steep the linen first in a waste lye,
and then for about a week in a potash lye poured over it boiling hot.
The cloth being taken out of this lye and washed, was next put into
wooden vessels containing buttermilk, in which it lay under a pressure
for five or six days. After this it was spread upon the grass, and kept
wet for several months, exposed to the sunshine of summer.

In 1728 James Adair from Belfast proposed to the Scottish Board of
Manufactures to establish a bleachfield in Galloway; this proposal the
board approved of, and in the same year resolved to devote L2000 as
premiums for the establishment of bleachfields throughout the country.
In 1732 a method of bleaching with kelp, introduced by R. Holden, also
from Ireland, was submitted to the board; and with their assistance
Holden established a bleachfield for prosecuting his process at
Pitkerro, near Dundee.

The bleaching process, as at that time performed, was very tedious,
occupying a complete summer. It consisted in steeping the cloth in
alkaline lyes for several days, washing it clean, and spreading it upon
the grass for some weeks. The steeping in alkaline lyes, called
_bucking_, and the bleaching on the grass, called _crofting_, were
repeated alternately for five or six times. The cloth was then steeped
for some days in sour milk, washed clean and crofted. These processes
were repeated, diminishing every time the strength of the alkaline lye,
till the linen had acquired the requisite whiteness.

For the first improvement in this tedious process, which was faithfully
copied from the Dutch bleachfields, manufacturers were indebted to Dr
Francis Home of Edinburgh, to whom the Board of Trustees paid L100 for
his experiments in bleaching. He proposed to substitute water acidulated
with sulphuric acid for the sour milk previously employed, a suggestion
made in consequence of the new mode of preparing sulphuric acid,
contrived some time before by Dr John Roebuck, which reduced the price
of that acid to less than one-third of what it had formerly been. When
this change was first adopted by the bleachers, there was the same
outc