laces. The hides of other cetaceous mammals, such as the whale and narwhal, are convertible into useful leather. The British "porpoise" laces are generally made from the skin of the white whale (beluga).

Defects of Raw Hides and Skins

A remarkable feature of the leather trade is the great waste due to the careless preparation of a large number of hides and skins. Naturally, owing to their greatly increased value in recent years, there has been a decided improvement, but much loss occurs every day from damage to hides which ought to be avoided. The chief faults are in flaying and curing, but there are other important defects due to natural causes.

Bad flaying may be due (1) to cutting holes in the hides or skins; (2) to "scoring" or "siding" (i.e., cutting into the hide without going completely through), this generally occurring in the flanks or sides which are the most difficult parts of the hide to remove from the carcase; and (3) to mis-shaping the hide, which ought to be left square.

Any or all of these defects may be found in a single hide. Despite the active work of several proprietors of hide markets and the tanners' federations the proportion of badly-flayed hides in England constitutes a serious loss, which, however, may not fall directly on either the butcher or the tanner, for the former may save in wages by employing an inexperienced slaughterman, while the tanner pays a reduced price for the hide.

The losses due to bad flaying and curing in the United Kingdom are mainly attributable to the butchers' preference to kill these beasts in their own back-yard rather than in a public abattoir. Many of these small private slaughterhouses ought to be condemned by the authorities; but very few people outside those immediately interested have taken the trouble to inspect a modern public abattoir where everything is provided to carry on the work expeditiously and hygienically. On the Continent, where the conservatism of traders is not permitted to interfere with the public welfare to such an extent as it is in England, public abattoirs have become quite a feature in many cities, and one of the principal results of the system has been a remarkable improvement in the preparation of raw hides and skins for the tanner. In fact, a mechanical method of flaying has been invented in Paris, and is used extensively at the public abattoirs, by which hides are removed from cattle without a single mark or scratch. The method is known as dépouille mécanique (mechanical flaying) and consists in forcibly removing, by means of a windlass worked by electric power, the portions of hide which adhere firmly to the carcase and which are found over the ribs, the buttocks, and the tail. The remaining part of the hide can be easily removed with the ordinary butchers' flaying knife or with a heavy hammer of special design. The apparatus required to carry out the mechanical method of flaying, beyond the fixtures in the abattoirs where the process is adopted, consist of two lengths of chain to hold the carcase firmly, two special hammers, and one pair of strong pincers; the cost of one set is about £4. Mr. Gaston Tainturier, of Paris, is the inventor of this system, which has added thousands of pounds to the incomes of Parisian butchers.

Figure 1 is from a photograph taken at the Islington (London) Abattoir, where a demonstration of the process was given by Mr. Tainturier in February, 1913.

Naturally, this method cannot be adopted in small slaughterhouses in back-yards, but is readily adaptable to public abattoirs, where practically all of the heavy work is done by electrical power. This exemplifies only one of several advantages of modern abattoirs over private slaughterhouses.

Although it cannot be expected that the English butchers will readily change their prejudice against modern abattoirs, they are slowly but gradually improving the flaying process in view of the high prices paid for perfect hides. The most progressive of the proprietors of the English hide markets are offering money prizes to slaughtermen for the best flayed hides. Strictly speaking, this encouragement should come from the butcher, who receives the benefit of increased prices for hides removed without a scratch. The Tainturier system, however, gives better results, no matter how well the hides are removed with the knife. The method is not patented, and it is open to anyone to adopt it merely for the cost of the apparatus, yet, despite this gain, no butcher outside France and Belgium has yet adopted the method, although the trade is losing hundreds of pounds every week through bad flaying.

Several other systems of improved flaying have been devised, and some of them patented, but very few have been adopted on a practical scale. One of the most useful consists of fixing a safeguard about a quarter of an inch from the edge of the knife; this prevents the possibility of cutting holes into the hide, although it does not, of course, prevent scoring, which is a serious defect in hides made into sole leather. A safe method is to use a sharp knife of hard wood, such as hickory, which has been successfully tried in one of the large American meat-packing establishments. The hides from these abattoirs are generally well-flayed, properly cured, and closely trimmed, with the result that they command higher prices than any other class of salted hides. The quotations for "packer" hides are followed with keen interest by tanners in all parts of the world.