being fibrous, but still compact, and by reason of its spread or area is used chiefly for dressing purposes in the bag and portmanteau manufacture and work of a similar description. Bull hides are fibrous; they are largely used for heel lifts, and for cheap belting, the thicker hides being used in the iron and steel industry.
A second classification now presents itself, viz. the British home supply, continental (Europe), British colonial, South American, East Indian, Chinese, &c.
In the British home supply there are three chief breeds: (1) Shorthorns (Scotch breed), (2) Herefords (Midland breed), (3) Lowland, or Dutch class. From a tanner’s standpoint, the shorthorns are the best hides procurable. The cattle are exposed to a variable climate in the mountainous districts of Scotland, and nature, adapting herself to circumstances, provides them with a thicker and more compact hide; they are well grown, have short necks and small heads. The Hereford class are probably the best English hide; they likewise have small heads and horns, and produce good solid sole leather. The Lowland hides come chiefly from Suffolk, Kent and Surrey; the animals have long legs, long necks and big heads. The hides are usually thin and spready. The hides of the animals killed for the Christmas season are poor. The animals being stall-fed for the beef, the hides become distended, thin and surcharged with fat, which renders them unsuitable for first-class work.
The continental supply may be divided into two classes: (1) Hides from hilly regions, (2) hides from lowlands. All animals subject to strong winds and a wide range of temperatures have a very strong hide, and for this reason those bred in hilly and mountainous districts are best. The hides coming under heading No. 1 are of this class, and include those from the Swiss and Italian Alps, Bavarian Highlands and Pyrenees, also Florence, Oporto and Lisbon hides. They are magnificent hides, thick, tightly-built, and of smooth grain. The butt is long and the legs short. A serious defect in some of these hides is a thick place on the neck caused by the yoke; this part of the hide is absolute waste. Another defect, specially noticeable in Lisbon and Oporto hides, is goad marks on the rump, barbed wire scratches and warbles, caused by the gadfly. Those hides coming under heading No. 2 are Dutch, Rhine valley, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Hungarian, &c. The first three hides are very similar; they are spready, poorly grown, and are best used for bag and portmanteau work. Hungarian oxen are immense animals, and supply a very heavy bend. Swedish and Norwegian hides are evenly grown and of good texture; they are well flayed, and used a great deal for manufacturing picker bands, which require an even leather.
New Zealand, Australian and Queensland hides resemble good English. A small quantity of Canadian steers are imported; these are generally branded.
Chinese hides are exported dry, and they have generally suffered more or less from peptonization in the storing and drying; this cannot be detected until they are in the pits, when they fall to pieces.
Anglos are imported as live-stock, and are killed within forty-eight hours. They come to Hull, Birkenhead, Avonmouth and Deptford from various American ports, and usually give a flatter result than English, the general quality depending largely on whether the ship has had a good voyage or not.
Among South American hides, Liebig’s slaughter supply the best; they are thoroughly clean and carefully trimmed and flayed. They come to London, Antwerp and Havre, and except for being branded are of first-class quality. Second to the Liebig slaughter come the Uruguay hides.
East Indian hides are known as kips, and are supposed to be, and should be, the hides of yearling cattle. They are now dressed to a large extent in imitation of box calf, being much cheaper. They come from a small breed of ox, and have an extremely tight grain; the leather is not so soft as calf.
Calf-skins are largely supplied by the continent. They are soft and pliant, and have a characteristically fine grain, are tight in texture and quite apart from any other kind of skin.
The most valuable part of a sheep-skin is the wool, and the value of the pelt is inversely as the value of the wool. Pure Leicester and Norfolk wools are very valuable, and next is the North and South Downs, but the skins, i.e. the pelts, of these animals are extremely poor. Devon Light leathers. and Cheviot cross-bred sheep supply a fair pelt, and sometimes these sheep are so many times crossed that it is quite impossible to tell what the skin is. Welsh skins also supply a good tough pelt, though small. Indian and Persian sheep-skins are very goaty, the herds being allowed to roam about together so much. The sheep-skin is the most porous and open-textured skin in existence, as also the most greasy one; it is flabby and soft, with a tight, compact grain, but an extremely loose flesh. Stillborn lambs and lambs not over a month old are worth much more than when they have lived for three months; they are used for the manufacture of best kid gloves, and must be milk skins. Once the lambs have taken to grass the skins supply a harsher leather.
The best goat-skins come from the Saxon and Bavarian Highlands, Swiss Alps, Pyrenees, Turkey, Bosnia, Southern Hungary and the Urals. The goats being exposed to all winds yield fine skins. A good number come from Argentina and from Abyssinia, the Cape and other parts of Africa. Of all light leathers the goat has the toughest and tightest grain; it is, therefore, especially liked for fancy work. The grain is rather too bold for glacé work, for which the sheep is largely used.
The seal-skin, used largely for levant work, is the skin of the yellow-hair seal, found in the Northern seas, the Baltic, Norway and Sweden, &c. The skin has a large, bold, brilliant grain, and being a large skin is much used for upholstery and coach work, like the Cape goat. It is quite distinct from the fur seal.
Porpoise hide is really the hide of the white whale; it is dressed for shooting, fishing and hunting boots. Horse hide is dressed for light split and upper work; being so much stall-fed it supplies only a thin, spready leather. The skins of other Equidae, such as the ass, zebra, quagga, &c. are also dressed to some small extent, but are not important sources.
Structure of Skin.—Upon superficial inspection, the hides and skins of all mammalia appear to be unlike each other in general structure, yet, upon closer examination, it is found that the anatomical structure of most skins is so similar that for all practical purposes we may assume that there is no distinction (see Skin and Exo-skeleton). But from the practical point of view, as opposed to the anatomical, there are great and very important differences, such as those of texture, thickness, area, &c.; and these differences cause a great divergence in the methods of tanning used, almost necessitating a distinct tannage for nearly every class of hide or skin.
The skins of the lower animals, such as alligators, lizards, fish and snakes, differ to a large extent from those of the mammalia, chiefly in the epidermis, which is much more horny in structure and forms scales.
The skin is divided into two distinct layers: (1) the epidermis or epithelium, i.e. the cuticle, (2) the corium derma, or cutis, i.e. the true skin. These two layers are not only different in structure, but are also of entirely distinct origin. The epidermis again divides itself into two parts, viz. the “horny layer” or surface skin, and the rete Malpighi, named after the Italian anatomist who first drew attention to its existence. The rete Malpighi is composed of living, soft, nucleated cells, which multiply by division, and, as they increase, are gradually pushed to the surface of the skin, becoming flatter and drier as they near it, until they reach the surface as dried scales. The epidermis is thus of cellular structure, and more or less horny or waterproof. It must consequently be removed together with the hair, wool or bristles before tannage begins, but as it is very thin compared with the corium, this matters little.
The hair itself does not enter the corium, but is embedded in a sheath of epidermic structure, which is part of and continuous with the epidermis. It is of cellular structure, and the fibrous part is composed of long needle-shaped cells which contain the pigment with which the hair is coloured. Upon removal of the hair some of these cells remain behind and colour the skin, and this colour does not disappear until these cells are removed by scudding. Each hair is supplied with at least two fat or sebaceous glands, which discharge into the orifice of the hair sheath; these glands impart to the hair that natural glossy appearance which is characteristic of good health. The hair bulb (b, fig. 1) consists of living nucleated cells, which multiply rapidly, and, like the rete Malpighi, cause an upward pressure, getting harder at the same time, thereby lengthening the hair.
