WOOL AND WOOLLEN MANUFACTURES. Wool is a modified form of hair, distinguished by its slender, soft, and wavy or curly structure, and by the highly imbricated or serrated surface of its filaments. The numerous varieties of the sheep are the most characteristic, as they are also by far the most important, producers of wool; but the sheep is by no means the only animal which yields wool employed for industrial purposes. The alpaca and other allied fibres obtained from the alpaca and its con-geners in South America (see ALPACA, vol. i. p. 597, and LLAMA, vol. xiv. p. 738), the mohair yielded by the Angora goat (MOHAIB, vol. xvi. p. 544), and the soft woolly hair of the camel are all wools of much industrial importance, while the most costly wool in the world is that yielded by the Cashmere goat of the Himalayan Mountains. At what point indeed it can be said that an animal fibre ceases to be hair and becomes wool it is impossible to determine, because in every characteristic the one class by imperceptible gradations merges into the other, so that a con-tinuous chain can be formed from the finest and softest merino to the rigid bristles of the wild boar.
Next to cotton, wool is the most important of all textile Early fibres used by mankind. From the ease with which it History, may be made into thread, and owing to the comfort derived from clothing of woollen texture, it naturally would be the textile first used by mankind for clothing. The testimony of all ancient records goes to prove the high antiquity of woollen textures and the early importance of the sheep. The different kinds of wool and the cloth made from them in antiquity are described by Pliny (H. N., viii. 73, 74, 190 sq.).
Among the arts of civilized life which the British Isles Wool in. owe to the Romans not the least important was the spin- Britain, ning and weaving of wool. The sheep certainly was a domestic animal in England long before the period of the Roman occupation; and it is most probable that such use was made of sheep skins and of wool as was common among uncivilized races. But the Romans established a woollen factory whence the occupying army was supplied with clothing, and the value of the manufacture was soon recognized by the Britons, of whom Tacitus remarks, " Inde etiam habitus nostri honor et frequens toga" (Agrie, c. 21). The product of the Winchester looms, and the wool whence it was made, soon established a reputation abroad, it being remarked that " the wool of Britain is often spun so fine that it is in a manner com-parable to the spider's thread." The reputation which English wool at this early period established was main-tained throughout medieval times; and the fibre was in great demand in the Low Countries and other Continental centres where skill in manufacture was highly developed. There are many allusions to woollen manufactures in England in early times; but altogether the native industry could not rival the products of the Continent, although the troubles in various industrial centres, from time to time, caused skilled workers in wool to seek an asylum in England. In the time of William the Conqueror Flemish weavers settled under the protection of the queen at Carlisle, but subsequently they were removed to Pembrokeshire. At various periods in the reigns of succeeding monarchs further immigrations of skilled Flemish weavers occurred, and they were planted at different places throughout the

country. The cloth fair in the church yard of the priory of St Bartholomew was instituted by Henry II.; guilds of weavers were established; and the exclusive privilege of exporting woollen cloth was granted to the city of London. Edward III. made special efforts to encourage woollen industries according to the manner in which it was supposed in mediaeval times that trade could be best encouraged. He brought weavers, dyers, and fullers from Flanders; he himself wore Flemish cloth; and to stimulate native industry he prohibited under pain of life and limb the exportation of English wool. Previous to the time of Edward III. English wool had been in larger demand on the Continent, where it had a reputation exceeded only by the wool of Spain, which for ages pro-vided Europe with the best material for cloth-making. The customs duties levied on the export of wool were an important source of the royal revenue, and Edward III.'s attempt to stop the trade appears to have been an honest though misguided attempt to foster native manufactures. His prohibitory law was, however, found to be unworkable, and the utmost that both he and his successors were able to effect was to hamper the export trade by vexatious restrictions and to encourage much "running" or smuggling of wool. Thus while Edward III. limited the right of exporting to merchant strangers, we find that Edward IV. decreed that no alien should export wool and that denizens should export it only to Calais. Legislation of this kind prevailed till the reign of Elizabeth, when the free exportation of English wool was permitted; and Smith, in his Memoirs of Wool, points out that it was during this reign that the manufacture made the most rapid progress in the country. In 1660 the absolute prohibition of the export of wool was again decreed, and it was not till 1825 that this prohibitory law was finally repealed. The pro-hibition appears to have been based on the mistaken notion that England possessed a monopoly of the finest kinds of wool, and that by withholding it from foreign competitors the home manufacturers would command the markets of the world. The results of the prohibitory law were exceedingly detrimental: the production of wool far exceeded the consumption; the price of the raw material fell; wool " running " or smuggling became an organized traffic; and the whole industry became disarranged. Extra-ordinary expedients were resorted to for stimulating the demand for woollen manufactures, among which was an Act passed in the reign of Charles II. decreeing that all dead bodies should be buried in woollen shrouds,—an enactment which remained in the Statute Book, if not in force, for a period of 120 years. On the opening up of the colonies, every effort was made to encourage the use of English cloth, and the manufacture was discouraged and even prohibited in Ireland.
It was not without reason that the attention of monarchs and legislators was so frequently directed to the woollen industries. Wool was indeed " the flower and strength and revenue and blood of England," and till the develop-ment of the cotton trade, towards the end of the 18th century, the woollen industries were, beyond comparison, the most important sources of wealth in the country. What the actual value of the trade at any early period was it is impossible to ascertain, and the estimates of wool pro-duction and the value of the manufactures in the 17th and 18th centuries vary widely. Towards the close of the 17th century the wool produced in England was estimated to be worth £2,000,000 yearly, furnishing £8,000,000 worth of manufactured goods, of which there was exported about £2,000,000 in value. In 1700 the official value of woollen goods exported was about £3,000,000, and in the third quarter of the century the exports had increased in value by about £500,000 only. In 1774 Dr Campbell
(Political Survey of Great Britain) estimated the number of sheep in England at 10,000,000 or 12,000,000, the value of the wool produced yearly at £3,000,000, the manu-factured products at £12,000,000, and the exports at £3,000,000 to £4,000,000. He also reckoned that the industry then gave employment to 1,000,000 persons. These figures, in the light of the dimensions of present day industries, may appear small, but they bore a predominant relationship to the other great sources of employment and trade of the period. In 1800 the native crop of wool was estimated to amount to 96,000,000 lb; and, import duty not being imposed till 1802, the quantity brought from abroad was 8,600,000 ft, 6,000,000 ft of which came from Spain. In 1825 the importation of colonial wool became free, the duty leviable having been for several previous years as high as 6d. per ft, and in 1844 the duty was finally remitted on foreign wool also.
Sheep were introduced at Jamestown in Virginia in Wool in 1609, and in 1633 the animals were first brought to America. Boston. Ten years later a fulling mill was erected at Rowley, Mass., " by Mr Rowley's people, who were the first that set upon making cloth in this western world." The factory woollen industry was, however, not established till the close of the 18th century, and it is recorded that the first carding machine put in operation in the United States was constructed in 1794 under the supervision of John and Arthur Schofield.
The prevailing colour of sheep's wool is white, but it The must not be forgotten that there are races with black, sheeI brown, fawn, yellow, and grey shades of wool. For manu-facturing purposes generally white wool is, of course, most valuable, but for the homespuns, which in earlier times absorbed the bulk of wool, natural colours were in many cases desirable and used with good effect. In domestic spinning, knitting, and weaving, natural colours are still largely taken advantage of, as in the cases of rough yarns, Shetland knitted shawls, Highland tweeds, &c.
As has already been indicated, the distinction between Charac-wool and hair lies chiefly in the great fineness, softness, teristics and waved delicacy of woollen fibre, combined with aof w°o1* highly serrated surface. These peculiarities are precisely the characters which give wool its distinctive value as a textile fibre, and most distinctive of all is the serrated structure which specially belongs to wool and gives it the important property of felting, upon which many of its applications depend. The serrations of wool and the wavy structure it assumes are closely connected, those wools which have the greatest number of serrations being also most finely waved in structure. The appearance pre-sented by wool under the microscope, as compared with the aspect of certain other animal fibres, is shown in fig. 1 (compare vol. ix. p. 133). The imbrications all lie in one direction,—from the root, their growing point, upwards to the apex of the fibre,—so that, while a lock of wool drawn between the finger and thumb from the root end outwards slips quite smoothly, if drawn in the contrary direction from point to root it offers a distinct resistance, and the fibre feels harsh and rough. Under the influence of moisture and pressure, tangled masses of wool thoroughly interlock and mat together, by the mutual clutching of the serrations of the fibres, and it is thus that the shrinking and thickening of woollen textures under washing is accounted for, and the capacity of cloth for felting or fulling is due to this condition of the fibre. The serrations are most numerous, acute, pointed, and distinct in fine merino wools, as many as 2800 per inch being counted in specimens of the finest Saxony wools. In the Leicester wool of England, on the other hand, which is a long bright staple, the serratures are not only much fewer in number, counting about 1800, but they are also less pronounced

in character, so that the fibre presents a smoother, less waved character. In some inferior wools the serrations are not so many as 500 per inch. A similar difference may be noted in the fineness of the fibres. Saxony lambs' wool has a diameter of from y-yVo to i so a lnch> whilst coarse Algerian wools may rise to a maximum diameter of about 2T5- inch.

Other distinguishing qualities of good wool consist in uniformity and strength of fibre with freedom from tender or weak portions in its length, a condition which not unfre-quently arises from ill health in the sheep. In ill-bred wool there may also be found inter-mingled "kemps" or dead hairs,— straight coarse shining fibres which show conspicuously among the wool, and be-come even more prominent in the manufactured and dyed goods. Wool also possesses a softness of touch and an elasticity both in the raw and manufactured condition which distinguish it from all other fibres. In length of staple it varies very much, attain-ing in combing wools to a length of as much as 15 to 20 inches. As a rule the fine felting wools are short in staple, these constituting carding or woollen yarn wools ; and the longer are lustrous and comparatively straight, and thus most suitable for combing or worsted wools. The latter wools approach mohair and alpaca in their characters, and they are pre-pared and spun by the same class of machinery.
The bulk of the wool of commerce comes into the market in the form of fleece wool, the product of a single year's growth, cut from the body of the living animal. The first and finest clip, called lambs' wool, may be taken from the young sheep at about the age of eight months. When the animal is not shorn till it attains the age of twelve or fourteen months the wool is known as hogg or hogget, and it, like lambs' wool, is fine and tapers into long thin ends. All subsequently cut fleeces are known as wether wool, and possess relatively somewhat less value than the first clip. Fleece wool as it comes into the market is either " in the grease," that is, unwashed, and with all the dirt which gathers to the surface of the greasy wool present; or it is received as " washed" wool, the washing being done as a preliminary to the sheep-shearing. Skin wool is that which is obtained from sheep which either die or are killed. Such wool is always of inferior value and much impregnated with lime from the steeping pits in the tan-yards in which the skins are first treated to soften and swell the skin for facilitating the easy separa-tion of the wool from it.
The wool market is supplied from almost every quarter of the globe, and the qualities and varieties of the article are exceedingly numerous. The range of woollen and worsted manufactures is also very wide, and the raw material suitable for one section of the trade is not at all fitted to supply other sections. Much more than is the case in any other textile industry we have in the woollen trades practically a series of separate and distinct industries, each with its own appropriate class of raw materials. The main distinctions are—(1) carding wools, in which felting properties are desirable; (2) combing wools, requiring length of staple and brightness of fibre, for hard-spun non-felting worsteds ; and (3) carpet and knitting wools, in which long and strong if somewhat coarse staple are the essential qualities. Breeding, climate, and food are the main factors in developing and rearing special races of sheep in which the qualities essential for producing the raw materials of any of these sections of industry are secured.
For centuries the finer wools used for cloth-making Merino throughout Europe were obtained from Spain, which was wooL the home of the famous merino breed developed from races of sheep originally introduced into the Peninsula by the Romans. Till early in the present century the superiority of Spanish merinos remained unchallenged, but the Penin-sular War and its attendant evils produced a depreciation of quality concurrently with the introduction of Saxon and Silesian wools, which suddenly supplanted the product of Spain, and hold the first place down to the present day. The Spanish merino sheep was introduced into Saxony by the elector in 1765, and by judicious crossing with the best native race developed the famous electoral breed. Merinos were carried to Hungary in 1775, and to France in 1776, and in 1786 Daubenton brought them to Rambouillet, whence a famous race developed. In 1802 the first merinos known to have left pure descendants were taken to the United States, and in 1809-10 an importa-tion (4000) of merino sheep was made. The introduction of merino blood has also largely modified certain of the breeds of English sheep, and from them, crossed with the English breeds, Southdowns and Leicesters, have sprung the vast flocks of sheep in the various Australasian colonies, which now bid fair to supply the whole world with wools of the merino class, and of the very highest quality.
Of colonial wools, which are now by a long way the Colonial most important supplied to the British market, the best W001-qualities come from Port Phillip, Sydney, and Adelaide, the first of these being excelled in quality as a cloth-making wool by the merinos of Saxony and Silesia alone. New Zealand also yields a very large annual crop of wool of high quality, and the wool of Tasmania is generally of fine colour, sound and uniform in staple. The Cape of Good Hope is the source of a large supply of wool, much of which, however, is unequal in strength and somewhat kempy in character. A great proportion of the wool which comes from South America is seriously deteriorated by burrs, and it is of a character which fits it for the worsted manufacture alone.
The wools grown in the United Kingdom may be British separated into three classes—(1) short or carding wool; wo°h (2) long or combing wool; and (3) blanket, carpet, and knitting wool. Of short wools Southdown may be taken as the type and best example. It is a staple of excellent quality, milling well, and suitable either for the woollen or worsted trade. The long wools of greatest importance are obtained from the Lincoln and Leicester sheep. These breeds yield a long fleece of remarkable lustre, and it was the possession of this class of wool which gave England its high reputation in former times as a wool-producing country. A similar quality of wool is also obtained from the East Riding Yorkshire breed of sheep. Cheviot wool
























Sheep washing.
approaches the Leicester class in some qualities, but is destitute of the latter's peculiar lustre, and is shorter in staple, though strong in fibre, with good milling qualities, which render it valuable for the tweed manufacture. Intermediate between the long and short there are several British breeds, which have been established either by crosses or local conditions and treatment, the most im-portant of these being found in Shropshire, Staffordshire, and Norfolk. The carpet wools are yielded by sheep of the type of the Blackface of the mountainous regions of Scotland, from which is obtained a fleece of long staple but somewhat unequal qualities. Much of the Highland wool is " laid," that is, impregnated with tar, from the practice of the stock-masters of smearing the animals with a mixture of tar and fat immediately after shearing, with a view of protecting them from the rigours of the climate. Of wools of a special character there may be noted Welsh wool, which possesses properties fitting it pre-eminently for the making of the famed Welsh flannels, and Shetland wool, which being very fine and soft in its nature is almost entirely worked up into delicate yarns for knitting the well-known Shetland shawls and other knitted work.
The weight of a fleece of wool of the various breeds of sheep ranges from under 2 lb in the case of the small Shetland breeds up to 8 or 9 lb for the large merinos and other heavy races, and in exceptional cases a heavy ram's fleece may reach so much as 15 lb ; but, taken all over, sheep may be reckoned to yield on an average 5 lb of wool in a year.
Where there is abundance of water and other conveniences it is the practice to wash or half-wash sheep previous to shearing, and such wool comes into the market as washed or half-washed fleece. The surface of a fleece has usually a thick coating of dirt adhering to it, and in the cases of merino breeds the fleece surface is firmly caked together into large solid masses, from the adhes'on of dirt to the wool constantly moist with the exudation from the skin of the greasy yolk or " suint," so that in an un-washed fleece nearly 30 per cent, of weight may represent dirt, and about 40 per cent, the greasy suint which lubri-cates the wool, while the pure wool is not more than one-third part of the whole. The yolk forms a protective covering to the sheep, rendering the fleece impervious to moisture, and while left in the wool also preserves it soft, pliant, and silky to touch. It forms a kind of natural soap, consisting principally of potash salts with animal oil, almost entirely soluble in cold water. The following analyses of German merino wool—the variety in which suint is most largely developed—illustrate the difference which may result in the composition of the fibre from the simple washing of the fleece on the sheep's back :—

Unwashed Merino. Washed Merino.
§o3 44-3 38-8 11-4 168 447 28-5 7-0 0-94 21-00 72-00
6-06 1-3
40-0 56-0 2-7
Suint and fatty matter ...
Pure wool




Moisture









Wool, however, which is merely washed in the rough-and-ready manner described below still retains great and variable quantities of suint, &c. Where running streams exist, the sheep are penned by the side of the water, and taken one by one and held in the stream while they are washed, one man holding and the other washing. The operation is objectionable in many ways, as it pollutes the stream, and it dissipates no mean amount of potash salts, valuable for manure or for other chemical purposes. Sheep washing appliances are now largely employed, the arrangement consisting of a pen into which the sheep are driven and subjected to a strong spray of water either hot or cold, which soaks the fleece and softens the dirt. This done, they are caused to swim along a tank which narrows towards the exit, and just as they pass out of the pen they are caught and subjected to a strong douche of pure water. After a few days the wool of a washed sheep is sufficiently dry for shearing or clipping, which is there-upon done.
A skilful shepherd will clip the fleece from a sheep in Sheep one unbroken continuous sheet, retaining the form and shearing, relative positions of the mass almost as if the creature had been skinned. In this unbroken condition each fleece is rolled up by itself, which greatly facilitates the sorting or stapling which all wool undergoes for the separation of the several qualities which make up the fleece.
Sorting or stapling was formerly a distinct industry, Wool and to some extent it is so still, though frequently the work stapling, is done in the premises of the spinners. Carding wools are separated and classed differently from combing wools, and in dealing with fleeces from different races the classification of the sorter varies. In the woollen trade short-staple wool is separated into qualities, known, in descending series from the finest to the most worthless, as picklock, prime, choice, super, head, seconds, abb, and breech, and the proportions in which the higher and lower qualities are present are determined by the qualities of the fleece or the race yielding the wool. In the worsted trade the classification goes, also in descending series, from fine, blue, neat, brown, breech, downright, seconds, to abb. The last

three are short and not commonly used in the worsted trade. The greater proportion of good English long wool will be classified as blue, neat, and brown; it is only in exceptional cases that more than from 5 to 8 per cent, is "fine" on the one hand, or of lower quality than breech on the other Generally speaking, the best portion of a fleece is from the shoulders and side of the animal (1 in fig. 2). The wool from 2 is irregular in growth, and often filled with burrs, ifec.; from the loin 3 it is shorter of staple and coarser, characters which become increasingly pronounced as we approach the tail and hind quarter 4. The belly
WOOl 5 is short, flG- 2.-Qualities of Fleece.
worn, and dirty, as is also the front of the throat 6, while on the head and shins 7 the product is short, stiff, and straight, more like hair than wool.
The sorter works at a table or frame covered with wire netting through which dust and dirt fall as he handles the wool. Fleeces which have been hard packed in bales, especially if unwashed, go into dense hard masses, which must be heated till the softening of the yolk and the swell-ing of the fibres make them pliable and easily opened up. When the fleece is spread out the stapler first divides it into two equal sides; then he picks away all straws, large burrs, and tarry fragments which are visible ; and then with marvellous precision and certainty he picks out his separate qualities, throwing each lot into its allotted receptacle. Sorting is very far removed from being a mere mechanical process of selecting and separating the wool from certain regions of the fleece, because in each individual fleece qualities and proportions differ, and it is only by long experience that a stapler is enabled, almost as it were by instinct, rightly to divide up his lots, so as to produce even qualities of raw material.
The washing which a fleece receives on the live sheep Scouring.

is not sufficient for the ordinary purposes of the manu-facturer. The scouring process is thus the first link in the long chain of manufacturing processes through which wool passes. On the careful and complete manner in which scouring is effected much depends. The qualities ot the fibre may be seriously injured by injudicious treatment, while, if the wool is imperfectly cleansed, it will take on dye colours unevenly, and all the subsequent manufacturing operations will be more or less unsatisfac-tory. The water used should be soft and pure, both to save soap and still more because the insoluble lime soap formed in dissolving soap in hard water is deposited on the woollen fibres and becomes so entangled that its removal is a matter of extreme difficulty. Wool washed with hard water is always harsh to the touch, and takes on dye colours but unevenly, owing to the interference of unremoved lime soap. In former times stale urine was a favourite medium in which to scour wool; but that is now disused, and a specially prepared potash soap is the detergent principally relied on. Excess of alkali has to be guarded against, since uncombined caustic acts ener-getically on the wool fibre, and is indeed a solvent of it. On this account a soap solution of too great strength leaves the wool harsh and brittle, and the same detrimental result arises when the soapy solution is applied too hot.
In former days, when the method of hand-scouring pre-vailed, the wool to be washed was placed with hot soap-sud in a large scouring "bowl" or vat, and two men with long poles kept stirring it gently about till the detergent loosened and separated the dirt and dissolved the grease. The wool was then lifted out and drained, after which it was rinsed in a current of clean water to remove the "scour," and then dried. These operations are now per-formed by mechanical agencies; and, to save soap, it is the practice to first steep the wool in steepers,—tubs having a perforated false bottom in which steam is blown through the wool steeped in pure water. The process removes much mechanically mixed dirt, and softens the other impurities, expanding the fibres themselves, and thus rendering the scouring operation easier and more expeditious. In machine scouring the object aimed at is to bring all the wool equally under the influence of the soapy solution, and to prevent it from matting into lumps in its progress through the washing bowls. Usually the wool passes through two sets of bowls, the soap solution being stronger in the first set. The wool is fed into one extre-mity of the bowl, which is an oblong vat, by an endless apron from which it passes to an immersed plate which sinks it into the hot soapy solution, where the whole is thoroughly soaked. It is then carried to the opposite end of the bowl, either by a series of forks or rakes with reciprocating motion, or by sets of iron prongs fixed at a uniform distance on a frame to which recipro-cating action is communicated by eccentric mounting. These carry the wool forward by gentle progression, so as not to ball it, till at the upper end it is caught and squeezed between rollers to wring out part of the water from the fibres, and then passed on for further drying. Drying. The more gently and uniformly the drying can be effected the better is the result attained, and over-drying of wool has to be specially guarded against. By some manufacturers the wool from the squeezing rollers is whizzed in a hydro-extractor, which drives out so much of the moisture that the further drying is easily effected. The commonest way, however, of drying is to spread the wool as uniformly as possible over a framework of wire netting, under which are a range of steam-heated pipes, the sides being enclosed in a framing of wood. A fan blast blows air over these hot pipes, and the heated air passes up and is forced through the layer of wool which rests on the netting. Unless the wool is spread with great evenness it gets unequally dried, and at points where the hot air escapes freely it may be much over-dried. A more rapid and uniform result is obtained by the use of Petrie's wool drier, which consists of a close chamber divided into five horizontal compartments, the floors of which consist of alternate fixed and movable bars. Under the chamber are a tubular heating apparatus and a fan by which a powerful current of heated air is blown up the side of the chamber, and through all the shelves or compartments successively, passing in the path over which the wool slowly travels. The wool is entered by con-tinuous feed at one side of the chamber; the strength of the blast carries it up and deposits it on the upper shelf, and by the action of the movable bars, which are worked by cranks, it is carried forward to the opposite end, whence it drops to the next lower shelf, and so on it travels till at the extremity of the lower shelf it passes out by the delivery lattice well and equally dried. Moore's drier is a simpler and less expensive form of drying apparatus, intermittent in its action. It consists of a case enclosed except as regards the top, where there are openings to allow the escape of moist air. It contains two tiers of steam-heated pipes, and directly over the top of each tier there is a row of iron rollers of small diameter set close together. At one end of the machine is a door for feeding wool into it, and at the opposite extremity is a spiked drum geared to rotate at a high speed. A fixed quantity of wool is fed into the machine at one time and placed on the lower series of rollers. These in their rotation carry the wool forward exposed to the heat of the pipes both above and below, till it reaches the drum, which, revolving rapidly, lifts it to the higher range of rollers. Over these the wool is carried back, till at the other end it again falls to the lower range, and so it circulates through the machine till the drying is completed. To withdraw the dried wool it is only necessary to raise the outlet door over the revolving drum, when it throws out the contents of the machine as fast as the wool comes within its range.
The dried wool, notwithstanding the several manipula- Tearing, tions to which it has been subjected, is still in the condition of matted locks, which have to be opened up and the whole material brought into a uniformly free and loose condition. This is effected in the Willey or teazing machine, which consists of a large drum and three small cylinders mounted in an enclosed frame. The drum is armed with ranges of powerful hooked teeth or spikes, and is geared to rotate with great rapidity, making about 500 revolutions per minute. The smaller cylinders, called workers, are also provided with strong spikes ; they are mounted over the drum and revolve more slowly in a direction contrary to the drum, the spikes of which just clear those of the workers. The wool is fed into the drum, which carries it round with great velocity; but, as it passes on, the locks are caught by the spikes of the workers, and in the contest for possessing the wool the matted locks are torn asunder till the whole wool is delivered in a light, free, and disentangled condition.
For certain classes of dirty wool, notably such as that Burring, which comes from Buenos Ayres, still another preparing operation is essential at this stage—that is, the removal of burrs or small persistently adherent seeds and other fragments of vegetable matter which remain in the wool. Two methods of effecting this—one chemical, the other mechanical—may be pursued. The chemical treatment consists in steeping the wool in a dilute solution of sulphuric acid, draining off the dilute acid by means of the hydro-extractor, and then immediately exposing the wool to further rapid drying in a heat of about 250° F. The acid leaves the wool itself uninjured, but is retained

by the more absorbent vegetable matter, and the high heat causes it to combine so energetically with the water left in the burrs that the vegetable matter becomes com-pletely carbonized. The wool is thereupon washed in water rendered sufficiently alkaline to neutralize any free acid which may remain, and dried. The same burr-removing effect is obtained by the use of a solution of chloride of aluminium, a method said to be safer for the wool and less hurtful to the attendant workmen than is the sulphuric acid process. For mechanical removing of burrs, a machine something like the Willey in appearance is employed. The main feature of this apparatus is a large drum or swift armed with fine short spikes curved slightly in the direction in which it rotates. By a series of beaters and circular brushes the wool is carried to and fed on these short spikes, and in its rotation the burrs, owing to their weight, hang out from the swift. The swift as it travels round is met by a series of three burring rollers rotating in an opposite direction, the projecting rails of which knock the burrs off the wool. The burrs fall on a grating and are ejected, with, of course, a good deal of wool adhering to them, by another rotating cylinder. Oiling. There remains yet another preliminary operation through which wool generally has to pass previous to the spinning processes. As delivered from the drying apparatus the wool is bright and clean, but somewhat harsh and wiry to the touch owing to the removal of the yolk which is its natural lubricant. To render it properly soft and elastic, and to improve its spinning qualities, the fibre is sprinkled with a percentage of oil, comparatively small quantities —by some spinners none—being used for worsted wools, but a larger amount being applied in the oiling of wool for woollen manufactures. The oil further has the advantage of producing a certain adhesiveness of the fibre in the spinning process, and thus it enables the spinner to get a more level and finer yarn, and it prevents loss from the flying off of separate fibres. As the oil is a costly item, it is of consequence that it should be equally distributed and used in a thrifty manner, for which end various forms of oiling apparatus have been devised, which sprinkle the oil in a very fine spray over thinly distributed wool carried by an endless cloth under the sprinkler. Gallipoli olive oil is the best medium for oiling combing wool; and for carding wool the liquid olein expressed from tallow and lard in the preparation of stearin is employed with advantage.
Blending. The raw material is now ready for the various spinning and other processes by which it is worked into useful forms ; but pure wool of one quality alone is not gene-rally used in the production of woven fabrics. For many reasons—among which cheapness figures prominently— wools are blended, and to no inconsiderable extent the added material consists of shoddy, mungo, or extract wools (see below). Blending with cotton is also practised, and for some purposes silk and wool are mixed. The question of colour as well as quality also determines blending opera-tions, natural coloured wools being frequently intermixed to obtain particular shades for tweeds, knitting yarns, &c. The various materials to be intermixed are bedded in due proportion in separate layers over each other, and passed through a teazer, from which they issue so intimately intermixed that they present a uniform appearance. Woollen The processes hitherto described—although woollen manu- manufacture has been specially kept in view—are more or factures. jggg esseT1 tial to wool for all purposes to which it is applied. But from this point the manufacturing opera-tions diverge into three main channels, which may be regarded as almost distinct textile industries. First and simplest we have the felt manufacture, in which cloth is made without either spinning or weaving; second is the woollen yarn and cloth manufacture, embracing the pre-paration of carded yarns and of cloth which is so milled or felted as to have the appearance of felt; and, thirdly, in the worsted yarn and cloth industry combed yarn is prepared and cloth showing the yarn and pattern is woven. These definitions must be taken to be accurate only in the broad general acceptation.
Felt is a kind of cloth made without spinning or weaving, but Pelt, simply by the mutual adhesion of the imbricated fibres. The peculiar property is most distinctly developed in the short or carding wools, but all wool, in common with mohair, alpaca, vicugna, and camel's hair, possesses it. Felting properties are also found in the hair of other animals; the rabbit, especially, supplies the finer felts used for hat-making, while the beaver hat, which is the ancestor of the modern dress hat, was a felt of beaver hair. Felted cloth is made by the combined influence of heat, moisture, and pressure or rubbing on a uniformly spread-out mass of woollen fibres. The wool is scribbled or carded out into a uniform lap of extreme thinness, but of a length and breadth sufficient for the size of the cloth to be made. A series of these carded laps are superimposed on each other till the requisite thickness of material is attained, and gene-rally the two external laps are made of material superior to the body. The lap so prepared is passed on between a series of pairs of rollers, which press against each other partly immersed in a trough of water, the upper rollers being solid and heavy while those under are hollow and heated by steam. To the upper rollers a gentle reciprocating motion is communicated, so that the material is felted as it passes on. When duly condensed, the cloth, of leathery consistence, is dyed, printed, dressed, and finished, when required, like ordinary woollen cloths. Felt has extensive appli-cations, there being made from it druggets, carpets, table-covers, horse-cloths, &e.; the coarser varieties are used for boiler-covering and other mechanical purposes.
It becomes necessary here to indicate the specific distinction of Woollens woollen and worsted yarns and cloth. In a general way it may be and said that woollen yarns are those made from short wools possessed worsteds, of high felting qualities, which are prepared by a process of carding, whereby the fibres are as far as possible crossed and interlocked with each other, and that these cardings, though hard spun on the mule frame, form a light fluffy yarn, which suits the material when woven into cloth for being brought into the semi-felted condition by milling which is the distinguishing characteristic of woollen cloth. On the other hand, worsted yarns are generally made from the long lustrous varieties of wool; the fibres are so combed as to bring them as far as possible to lie parallel to each other; the spinning is done on the throstle frame, and the yarn is spun into a compact, smooth, and level thread, which, when woven into cloth, is not milled or felted. At all points, however, woollen and worsted yarns as thus defined overlap each other, some woollens being made from longer wool than certain worsteds, and worsteds being, when made from short staple wool, also carded as well as combed; and occasionally worsted yarn is spun on the mule frame, while milling or felting is a process done in all degrees,—woollen being sometimes not at all milled, while to some worsteds a certain milling finish is given. The fundamental distinction between the classes rests in the crossing and interlacing of the fibres in preparing woollen yarn,—an operation confined to this alone among all tex-tiles, while for worsted yarn the fibres are treated, as in the case of all other textile materials, by processes designed to bring them into a smooth parallel relationship to each other.
Woollen yarns, as above explained, are exclusively made by the Carding, process of carding. The simple apparatus—the hand-cards—with which carding was done before the introduction of machinery and factory-work consisted of square or oblong pieces of board with handles, one face of the hoard being covered with card leather, which was closely studded with fine elastic steel teeth, pointed iu one direction and bent as in fig. 3. These teeth were strong or fine according to the nature, length, and strength of the fibre to be carded, but the finer the teeth the more \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ closely were they studded together. A ^mm\\\ttmYi quantity of teased and oiled wool was
placed "on the surface of one card, which, riMlMUMMMk taken in the left hand, was held teeth FIG. 3.—Card Teeth, upward on the lap of the operator, while the other card, held in the right hand teeth downward, and consequently pointed in an opposite direction, was drawn from end to end over it, each card thus taking up a share of the wool which became entangled in its teeth. In this way, by drawing the one card over the other repeatedly, the whole of the wool was ultimately separated and equally distributed over the pair of cards. The wool was then stripped out of the cards by drawing the teeth of one through those of the other in the direction of their inclination. The carded wool thus lifted out was condensed into a loose but uniform round pipe or "carding" by rolling on the back of the card, and these cardings were then ready for spinning on the wheel.

For the apparently simple operation of carding, the factory machinery is complex, delicate, and very expensive. Ordinarily it consists of three carding-engines, called respectively the scribbler, the intermediate, and the finisher, but sometimes the intermediate is omitted. In each of these there is a complicated series of card-covered cylinders of different diameters running at different rates of speed, sometimes in a contrary and sometimes in the same
direction, which are engaged in contending with each other for the

wool supplied to the machine, in abstracting it altogether from their neighbours, and passing it on to be again contended for and teased in the operation, and finally passed clean out of the machine. A sectional illustration (fig. i) of the first portion of a "scribbler" will serve as an illustration of the whole operation from beginning to end. The wool is entered to the appa-ratus by a travelling lattice, the supply-being equalized and carefully distributed by a mechanical feed. It is caught between the lower two of a range of three feed-rollers a, revolving immediately behind which is the "licker-in" roller b, which immediately takes possession of the por-tion of the feed which has fallen to the share of the lower or No. 1 feed-roller. The remainder of the feed is carried upward on the middle feed-roller, from which it is taken by the uppermost of the three rollers a, and from it the wool is delivered to the "licker-in." In this way a certain amount of preliminary blending and intermixing is accomplished. Against the licker-in revolves the "angle stripper" c, the function of which is to remove the wool from the former and deliver it over to the great breast cylinder, which re-volves at a high speed (surface-velocity about f mile per minute). By the cylinder it is carried on till it comes against a small roller revolving slowly in the opposite direction, called '' worker No. 1" d, which abstracts part of the wool, and carrying it round gives it up to the somewhat smaller roller, the "stripper" e, which again delivers it to the breast cylinder. Passing on it carries the wool partly to three such sets of cylinders and rollers over which the wool passes till it is delivered; The intermediate carding-engine has two swifts, with relative workers, &c, and the finisher has also two swifts and a condenser. In some carding-engines the swifts are provided with more than two sets of workers and strippers. This is particularly the case in a class of carding-engines provided with only one swift or cylinder of very large diameter, around which there are five sets of workers and strippers (fig. 5).
The carded wool, as it leaves the last swift of the finisher card, is Condens-

FIG. 5.—Single-Cylinder Carding Engine, the second worker/, and stripper g, when the same operation is re-peated. Continuing its progress, the cylinder with its covering of wool next comes in contact with the "fancy " 7i, the teeth of which are set so as to pass a little way into those of the cylinder. Its effect is to throw the wool partly out of its teeth and prepare it for being entirely removed by the "doffer" i, which is the next roller met by the cylinder, and which, like the "fancy," revolves in a contrary direction to the breast cylinder. The angle stripper j passes the wool from the doffer to the next cylinder, which is called a "swift," and which has the same workers, strippers, fancy and doffer rollers as the breast cylinders. The scribbler contains

the form of a continuous equally-distributed lap. To prepare it ing, for spinning, this lap must now be divided into a scries of equal strips or ribbons, and these then condensed into a rounded carding or sliver sufficiently compact to bear winding on a bobbin. The condenser for doing this is attached to the finisher card, and con-sists of rings or bands of card-cloth the width of the strips to be made, placed on one or on two cylinders, which rings doff the portion of the lap against which they revolve and yield it up to a stripper. These strips as they pass out are acted on by a pair of rubbers which, by a partly oscillating motion, rub the strip into the form of a carding of rounded loose untwisted fibres, which in the subsequent operation of spinning is easily drawn out to the degree of tenuity required in the yarn to be made.
The muie-frame employed for spinning woollen yarns is the same Mule in principle as, but in some respects modified in action from, the spinning, spinning-mule used for fine counts of cotton yarn. The mule (fig. 6) consists of a stationary frame on which the bobbins of sliver are placed, and of a carriage which travels back and forward a distance of in all about 2 yards from the stationary frame. The carriage contains in a horizontal row the spindles which give twist to the yarn and wind it on the bobbins or paper tubes fixed on them;
and the complicated motions of the whme machine are regulated by gearing and belting from head-stocks on the stationary frame. The carriage being close up to the stationary frame, the ends of the slivers are passed through a pair of small giving-off rollers and attached to the bobbins or tubes in the carriage. The carriage then begins to travel back on its rails, the slivers being simultaneously delivered to it through the rollers, at the same rate at which it travels, till, say, a yard length is given out, and as the carriage has been moving back the spindles have been revolving slowly so as to communicate some twist to the sliver; but up to this point there has been no drawing out or drafting. But now the rollers cease to give out sliver, the carriage continues travelling back, and the spindles revolve at a greatly increased rate, simultaneously drawing out the sliver and giving it the requisite twist, till, when it conies to the end of the rails over which it runs, the yard of original sliver is drawn out to 2 yards of yarn and twisted almost enough. The full twist is given while the carriage remains standing at the end ; then the spindles are reversed two or three times to unwind a small proportion of yarn which the twisting operation leaves near the point of the bobbin; and lastly the carriage is run in to the stationary frame while the spindles wind the now finished yarn on the bobbins or tubes, an automatic arrangement securing due tension and the proper wind-ing of the yarn.
Yarn, as delivered from the mule in woollen-spinning, or from the Woollen throstle in the case of worsteds, is in the condition known as singles, yarn For twisting the singles into yarn of two or more ply it is wound on bobbins ; sometimes the bobbins from the spinning-frame are used direct, and placed on pegs in the twisting-frame, which is a mechanism like the throstle, but without the arrangement for

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drafting. The twist is given in the reverse direction from that in which the singles are spun, and thereby the single is to some extent untwisted. Yarns of two-, three-, and five-ply and upwards are made ; these are sometimes redoubled or again twisted together. The yarn may be made up of precisely the same singles; sometimes different counts or sizes of singles are twisted together; in other cases the colours may be different; and yet again yarns may be made of distinct fibres, such as wool and cotton, or wool and silk, &c. Numerous variations of the method of twisting arc employed to pro-duce loops, knots, and other irregularities in the yarn, for con-venience in weaving and knitting fancy textures. Worsted If we adhere to the definition of worsted yarn which distin-yarn. guishes it as being made from wool fibres brought as far as possible into a level parallel condition, we shall have to do only with two methods of manufacture,—(1) of yarn from long wool by the method of drawing, gilling, and combing, and (2) of yarn from medium and short staple wools, which are first carded and afterwards combed. But there is commonly added a third class of worsted yarns, worsted only in the sense that they are not meant for felting. These are carpet yarns and lightly twisted knitting yarns, which, being meant to be full and open in structure, are prepared for spinning by carding alone, precisely as in making woollen yarns, c'ombing. The primitive method of wool-combing, and the simple imple-ments employed till comparatively recent days, when the ingenious machinery now used was invented, will serve to illustrate the problem of preparing long wool for spinning. The hand combs employed were studded with two—sometimes three—rows of long, smooth, rounded, and sharp-pointed steel spikes. The operative was provided with a pair of these combs. He had a comb-post to which he could attach them, and a comb-pot or small stove in which he heated the teeth of his combs and the wool which he worked. The teeth of one comb being duly heated he fixed it in the comb-post, and taking a quantity of wool previously oiled he dashed it in portions into the teeth of the comb and drew it through, leaving a portion locked in the spikes, and this operation he continued till the comb was well filled with wool. Then he placed it in the comb-pot to heat up, while he similarly proceeded to fill the teeth of the second comb, which in the meantime had been heating. With both filled and duly heated, he took one comb in his left hand, laying it in his lap teeth upwards, and with the other in his right he proceeded to comb out the locks, beginning first at the tips and working gradually in as the fibres were smoothed and opened out. In the end the combs were worked with teeth close up to each other and through the entire mass, the noils or short fibre being thus entirely combed out, excepting a small quantity left in the teeth which could not be reached by the opposing combs.
The typical modern process in worsted-yarn fabrication is that in which the preparation consists in gilling and subsequent comb-ing, as practised when long wool is the staple to bo treated. The object of gilling is to bring all the fibres level and parallel to each other, and to prepare a uniform sliver for the subsequent combing operation. The gilling-machine or gill-box (fig. 7) in its essen-tial features consists first of a pair of rollers to which the wool is threaded, then, falling down, are returned by the action of similai screws operating in the

opposite direction, till just under the feed rollers they rise again to catch the feed

Beyond these it is caught by rows of steel pins fixed in heavy steel bars, termed fallers, which rise in close and constant succession immediately behind the feed-rollers, penetrate the wool presented to them, and travel forward with it towards a second pair of rollers which catch the fibre and draw it away. The spike-covered fallers are so called because they travel from one to the other pair of rollers, carried forward by endless screws into which they are

of wool, and so continue to circulate. There is thus a continuous line of fallers travelling be-tween feed-rollers and back rollers, but as the back rollers revolve much more quickly than the front rollers, and also draw the wool through them more rapidly than it is presented to them by the fallers, there is a constant and steady drawing of wool away from the front rollers and through the teeth of the fallers, and this draught tends to cause all the fibres to arrange themselves in the direction in which they are being gently dragged. A set of gill-boxes consists of five or six machines constructed on the same principle, but with the pins of the fallers finer and more closely studded as the fibre travels on and as the orderly and symmetrical arrangement of the sliver increases. From the first two or three machines the wool is generally delivered as a broad lap, and it is similarly presented to the next, but in the later boxes the pro-duct is condensed into a sliver, which is received in large cylin-drical tin cans. Six of these cans are brought to the front of the next gill-box, and the six slivers are, in passing through, drawm into and delivered as one, and, such an operation being repeated three times, it will be seen that any original portion of sliver must be distributed over a great length, and in this way the fibres are brought even with each other and a very level and uniform strand is produced. In the original form of gill-box the fallers travelled from front to back at a uniform speed, and thus all the draughting was done by the rapid rotation of the back rollers. Now, by a graduated pitch in the screws which carry the fallers forward, they travel at a steadily accelerated rate, beginning slow, and reaching their greatest rapidity just as they deliver the wool to the back rollers, which revolve still more rapidly. Thus there is steady draughting throughout the whole range of the machine, and the wool is at once more gently treated and more uniformly drawn out than in the old forms of the machine.
It will be obvious that the gill-boxes through which long wool passes, while possessing the power of bringing the fibres into a smooth, equal, and regular condition, do nothing in the way of selecting and separating out the long and straight from the short and curly fibres which are always intermixed. To obtain an even and smooth worsted yarn it is necessary to effect this separation, and it is the function of the various forms of combing machine now in use to separate the " top" or long fibre from the "noil" or short and broken wool, and to deliver the former as a continuous sliver of uniform size. The invention of a successful combing machine has been the great triumph of the modern worsted in-dustry, and the introduction of the apparatus led, as is commonly the case with all great inventions, to a vast amount of dispute and litigation, and many conflicting claims of merit. About 1840 at least three investigators were separately at work on the problem —Mr S. C. Lister of Bradford, Mr Donisthorpe of Leicester, and M. Heilmann of Alsace. Messrs Lister and Donisthorpe conjointly secured a patent for a combing machine, in connexion with which they entered into partnership, but their patent rights were success-fully disputed by Heilmann under a patent granted to him in 1847, and they were obliged to buy up his invention for £80,000. Since that time much attention has been given to combing machinery, not for wool alone, but also for spun silk and cotton; and now there are many varieties of apparatus in the market for doing wdiat not very long ago was pronounced to be utterly impracticable. The three principal classes of machine at present used for wool-combing are—(1) the Lister or nip machine, which is most suitable for long combing wools, mohair, and alpaca; (2) the Noble or circular comb, principally useful for combing shorter staple or intermediate wools; and (3) the Holden or square-motion comb, wdiich is applicable for short staple wools. It is impossible here to convey a full con-ception of the delicate almost intelligent manner in which these machines work. A principal feature of them is a large ring or circle studded with rows of fine steel pins, wdiich is made to revolve horizontally within the machine. By various devices the wool is fed into the teeth of the ring in a continuous series of tufts with its ends overlapping the edge of the ring as it revolves. In the case of the nip machine the wool is fed in by fallers as in the gill-box. The end of the sliver is caught by a nip which tears a tuft through the pins of the fallers, and thus partly combs it out. This tuft the nip places on the teeth of the revolving circle, by which it is carried on till it comes to a pair of upright rollers revolving close to the edge of the circle. These rollers catch between them the ends of the long fibre and draw it out of the teeth of the circle in a continuous sliver as it revolves. The Noble or circular comb is provided with three pin-studded rings, one large and two small, the latter being so centred within the larger ring that in rotating their outer edges just meet the inner edge of the large ring which rotates around them. The tufts of wool are dabbed down over the pins of the larger and smaller circles at the points where they meet, and of course as they rotate the teeth immediately begin to draw apart, and the wool is divided, the long fibres hanging over the edge of each circle. These fibres are caught between upright

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rollers, which thus deliver four continuous slivers of top, and leave the noil to be otherwise lifted out of the teeth, awing. The sliver as delivered from the combing machine is made up into a ball by a balling gill-box, behind the back rollers of which instead of a can there is a large bobbin for receiving the sliver, which is wound on it in a diagonal manner from the oscillating rotation given to the bobbin. Such balls of sliver then undergo the operation of drawing, the purpose of which is still further to equalize the strand of fibre, and to bring it into a sufficiently attenuated form for spinning. The principle of drawing or draughting consists in presenting the sliver to a pair of receiving rollers which pass it on to a pair of delivery rollers, which rotate proportionately faster than the receivers, and to that extent draw out and attenuate the sliver. Supposing the wool to pass through six such drawing frames, six slivers may be fed into the first and drawn out to the dimensions of one; the same may be repeated in the second, five slivers may be reduced to one in the third, four to one in the fourth and fifth frames; and in the roving frame, in which a little twist is given to the sliver before it is wound on a bobbin, two slivers may be elongated into one. Thus we have any length of sliver drawn out 6x6 x5 x 4x4x2 = 5760 times its original extension, and with increase of frames this extension multiplies enormously. Treating the slivers in nine drawing frames, we may have 8x6x5x5x5x4x3x2x2 = 288,000 of extension. Carded Short and medium staple wools are carded before being gilled worsted, and combed. The preliminary operations differ in no way from those employed for woollen yarns. After carding the wool is generally washed, previous to gilling in a back washer. The machine consists of two sud bowls or vats provided with immersers and squeezing rollers through which the cardings are passed ; then they are carried round two copper cylinders internally heated by steam, from which they are passed on and delivered by the fallers of a gilling apparatus. Throstle The bobbins of elongated and slightly twisted rovings are now spinning, ready for spinning on the throstle spinning-frame, on which it is simultaneously drawn out to its ultimate tenuity, twisted, and wound on a bobbin. The drawing out is done practically by the same device as the drafting of sliver in the drawing-frame. The bobbins of rove are placed on pegs on the frame slightly canted forward, so that the roving as drawn off conies away at right angles from the bobbin. The rovings pass first between a pair of rollers, and are carried on and supported by small carrier rollers till they reach a front pair of rollers, the upper of which is covered with leather and the lower grooved or furrowed. The space between the back and front pairs of rollers, termed the ratch, is that in which the final drawing is effected, and the amount of attenuation elfected is dependent on the relatively faster rate at which the front rollers rotate as compared with the back pair. Immediately the slender cord has passed the front pair of rollers, twist is imparted to it by the spindle working either on the old flyer principle, on the cup principle, or with the more recent ring and traveller. See also YARN. The doubling and subsequent treatment of worsted singles are the same as in the case of woollen yarn singles from the mule frame.
Shoddy The term shoddy was formerly one of some opprobrium in con-and nexion with woollen manufactures, but the substance is now frankly mungo. recognized as a material of great utility for many purposes when body and warmth are more essential than toughness or elasticity. Shoddy consists of rags and shreds of stockings, flannels, and other softworsted fabrics torn and reduced to such fragments of the original fibre as can be made by the operation. Mungo is a similar pre-paration made from rags, and from shreds and clippings of milled woollen cloths, being divided into new mungo made from tailor's waste, and old mungo from rags of all degrees of degradation. Extract wool is that which is recovered from rags of various cloths in which cotton and wool are variously woven together. The wool is freed from the cotton by the same chemical or carboning process which is employed in freeing dirty wool from burrs, viz., by treating the union fabric with a solution of sulphuric acid and heating it in a stove, when the acid energetically attacks and chars the vegetable fibre, leaving the wool unharmed. Shoddy and mungo are prepared by dusting the rags and fragments, classifying them according to colour and quality, picking out seams, oiling the material, and then passing it into a machine significantly called the "devil,"which literally rends the rags, &c., to fragments, which look more like dust than fibres, hy the exceedingly rapid rotation of a swift or large cylinder armed with powerful iron spikes, with equally strong toothed rollers revolving in an opposite direction. Into the same category with these come the flocks formed in the various pro-cesses of finishing cloth, which are, of course, even shorter than the others. Indeed the shoddy manufacturers hold that "anything long enough to have two ends " is sufficient for manufacturing purposes. The shoddy trade was begun in Batley, Yorkshire, by Mr Benjamin Law in 1813, and, notwithstanding the disfavour with which it was long viewed, it prospered and developed till the shoddy district of Batley, Dewsbury, and their surroundings became the centre of a great and prosperous branch of the woollen trade entirely dependent on these disintegrated materials. It is said that as much as 125,000,000 lb of shoddy material is now yearly worked up into cloth in England alone. Shoddy, &c, cannot be used without a due proportion of natural-length wool, usually one-third of pure wool being employed in spinning shoddy yarn ; but sometimes as much as 80 per cent, of the finished cloth consists of shoddy. It finds its way into a very large proportion of woollen goods, but its use is detrimental where tenacity and wear are required. For linings, rugs, wraps, and heavy friezes, pilots, druggets, blankets, &c, in which bulk and warmth more than wear-resisting qualities are required, it is suitable, and it also makes into good light milled cloth for ladies' jackets. Shoddy is practically a new source of textile material; its employment is a utilization of waste, and fur-nishes cheap serviceable textures.
For the dyeing and weaving of woollen and worsted fabrics the Cloth reader is referred to the separate articles relating to these processes, finishing. But a piece of cloth—woollen cloth especially—as it comes from the loom is very far from being a finished product. Indeed the most characteristic operations in woollen-cloth manufacture are subsequent to the weaving stage. Woollen cloth from the loom, called "roughers," has an irregular, slack aspect, very different from the same web when it comes to be sold as, say, broad-cloth. The web as it leaves the loom is still saturated with the oil with which it was sprinkled before spinning, and impregnated with the size applied to the yarn to give it tenacity and consistency in weav-ing. To remove these it is scoured with hot soap-sud in a trough having a convex bottom, and fitted with wooden mallets which are made to fall obliquely against the cloth. After being scoured in this way, it is stretched in a frame for burling or perching, an operation which consists in going carefully over the wdiole web, picking out all burrs and knots in the texture, and darning up holes and open spots which it may slnjw.
Fulling is the one process which is specially distinctive of woollen Fulling, textures,—its results being shown in the highest degree in broad-cloths, doeskins, and other like goods. Every one knows how flannels, blankets, and hosiery tend to contract with frequent washing, gaining in thickness and solidity what they lose in exten-sion and elasticity ; such shrinking is greatly accelerated when woollen articles are much rubbed in very hot water. This shrink-ing or fulling is, as already explained, the result of the serrated wavy structure of wool. The operation of fulling or milling is performed ill the fulling stocks, or in the more modern milling-machine ; but, by whatever agency carried out, the effect is always the same. The old method of fulling by the stocks is wasteful of power, and the blows the stocks give tend sometimes to tear the cloth, drawbacks from which the milling-machine is comparatively free. The cloth to be fulled is well saturated with hot soap and water, and either worked under the falling weight of the stocks or pressed and rubbed between rollers in the milling-machine wdiile so heated and soaped. The more prolonged the operation the more does the material shrink up and thicken, and a piece of cloth may even be milled till it is reduced to half its original length and breadth. The degree of fulling is a distinctive feature of many different varieties of cloth. In the treatment of broad-cloth, doe-skins, meltons, and all nap-finished cloth, the milling is carried so far that the fibres become densely matted, obliterating the appear-ance of weave, and giving the piece more the aspect of felt than of cloth. Fabrics such as Venetian cloths, and diagonals, &c, to which no pile-finish is given, are milled only to the extent of solidifying and increasing the substance and strength of the texture, and tweeds are only very slightly felted to give them a dressed surface. On the conclusion of the fulling operation the goods are scoured to free them from soap, which is very simply done by gradually supplanting the soap-sud with pure water, which is tepid at first but is gradually cooled by additions till in the end the cloth is being worked in pure cold water.
The cloth that is taken from the fulling-machine must immedi- Teasling. ately be stretched uniformly in all directions by hooks on a frame, so that it may dry evenly without wrinkle or curl. The frame may be placed in a hot-air chamber to hasten the drying, or the cloth may be allowed to dry under ordinary atmospheric conditions. In this operation a pile or nap is raised on the surface of milled cloth. The raising of the pile is effected by the agency of the flower-head of the teasle (Dipsacus fullonum), which forms a cone-like spike covered with imbricated scales. These scales end in sharp, recurved hooks, possessed of high elasticity, combined with just sufficient stiffness for the work they have to do. The use of these hooked teasles is to scratch the surface of the milled cloths, and getting entangled with minute surface fibres break these or pull out their ends, and so raise over the wdiole surface a fine but un-equal nap. Formerly the teasles were set together in a flat frame, and by hand the workmen brushed them in a uniform manner over the whole surface of the tightly stretched cloth. But this labori-ous handicraft has long been superseded by the use of the gig-mill or dressing-machine. This apparatus consists of a cylinder made to rotate at a high rate of speed. The surface of the cloth to be raised is, in a state of uniform tension, brought in contact with the

revolving cylinder. An automatic arrangement in the machine regulates the lightness or closeness of contact of cloth and teasles. The myriads of elastic hooks scratch the entire surface, disengaging and opening up short fibres, and thus covering the whole with a nap. There are, however, several varieties of pile desired in dressing woollen cloths, and a pile may be raised in a certain class of fabrics for a purpose quite the opposite of that for which other piles are formed. Thus in cloth dressing the object is to get a glossy and smooth nap which quite covers and conceals the under-lying structure, while tweeds and similar goods are teasled with the view of ultimately removing all pile from the surface and leaving the pattern of the cloth well defined and free from all hairiness. Pile-dressed fabrics are raised by the wet method: that is, the cloth to be operated upon in the dressing-machine is first damped, and the nap so produced lies smooth, flat, and level in one direc-tion, covering the surface in much the same way as short hairs cover the skin of an animal. Cloth raised dry, on the other hand, throws its fibre ends straight out from the cloth, the action indeed being a kind of combing-up of all the more loose and open surface fibres so as to prepare them for being entirely cropped or shorn off in order to leave the fabric with a clean, bare surface. Metallic teasles have frequently been suggested and to some extent employed as a substitute for the vegetable product, but hitherto such devices have not proved quite satisfactory. Cropping. The operation of cropping was also formerly a handicraft, the worker using a huge pair of shears, and the employment demanded much dexterity and skill to produce a uniform smooth pile or a well-cleaned surface. It is now done with equal rapidity and certainty by a machine which in principle is the same as the lawn-mower. It consists of a cylinder armed with a series of helical knives or cutters, the cylinder revolving with great velocity against the smooth stretched surface of the cloth, partly cutting away and partly tearing oil' the tips of the projecting fibres which come within the range of its ledger-blades. Four hundred years before the practical introduction of this helical cropping machine, it was invented and proposed for modern use by Leonardo da Vinci. Pressing. With the view of giving lustre to the finished cloth, it is, when taken from the cropping machine and brushed on the brushing machine to remove the flocks produced in shearing, wound tightly round a huge drum, and boiled, or rather immersed in water heated to from 160° to 180° F., for three or four hours. It is then unwound, the ends are reversed, winding first on the roller the end which was on the outside in the previous boiling, and again boiled. Finally it is pressed in an hydraulic press, in which the cloth is heated either by the introduction of hot iron-plates between the folds or by forcing steam through it in the press, this last process adding to the solidity and smoothness of the cloth and developing the lustre characteristic of a well-finished fabric. Manufac- The range and variety of cloths and other textures made from tures in wool are exceedingly great. Under the heading of cloth manufac-wool. tures, there may be enumerated, of piled cloths, broad-cloth, doeskins, cassimeres, meltons, beavers, and friezes. Of cloths nulled and cropped bare there are Venetians, sataras, and diagonals, which differ in the arrangements of warp and weft in the weaving. Tweeds, which form an important item, are cloths only slightly felted, raised dry, cropped, and pressed. The variety of worsted cloths is still greater, embracing says, serges, sateens, repps, merinos, mousselaines-de-laine, tartans, camlets, Russell cords, coburgs, lastings, delaines, and Orleans cloth. Hosiery forms a manufacture apart, as do also the processes of making carpets, blankets, flannels, shawds, rugs, and wrappers, curtain-cloths, and alpaca and mohair textures.
As an illustration of the advantages which have resulted from the application of machinery to the many and complicated pro-cesses of cloth manufacture, it has been calculated by M. Alcan that, whereas in the 17th century the labour of more than 10,000 men was needed to produce in one day a ton of cloth from a ton of wool, that amount of work now can bo done in one day by about 1900. frade. Wherever civilized mankind dwell there is found wool produc-tion, with more or less of woollen manufacture. This fact not-withstanding, the cultivation of wool tends to become increasingly associated with special localities, and from age to age different regions enter into competition as sources of wool, and the great sources of supply correspondingly change their position. Neglect-ing the produce of Britain, which probably has not varied to any notable extent during the century, though its movement as an article of export has developed greatly in that interval, we may briefly note the vast developments which have taken place in some sources of supply. In 1800 most of the wool, other than that from native sources, used in England came from Spain. In 1810 167 tb was imported from the Australian colonies, and now the imports from these colonies reach 400,000,000 to yearly, and the imports from Spain have dwindled to 1,700,000 lb. Similarly the quantity brought from the Cape of Good Hope has grown from about 30,000 lb in 1820 to 61,250,000 lb in 1886. The growth and fluctuation in the imports from these and other regions are exhibited in the following table :—
The exports of raw wool have risen in fairly steady proportion Exports to the imports, springing up from 92,542,384 lb in 1870 to of wool. 311,902,741 lb in 1886, the average excess of the imports over the exports each year being from 200,000,000 to 230,000,000 B.
The following table exhibits the relative position and progress of Factory
the principal textile manufactures in the United Kingdom at employ-
various periods :—

== TABLE ==

The growth of the export trade from the United Kingdom in Export
woollen and worsted manufactures from 1820 is exhibited in the of manu-
subjoined table (in thousands of pounds sterling) :—

== TABLE ==

Particular districts have attained a predominant hold on certain Centres of
branches of the manufacture, and with great tenacity the industries industry,
have clung for long periods to the districts which have succeeded
in establishing a reputation for the branches they cultivated. In
this way the manufacture of superfine broad-cloths has been long
associated with the West of England, specially with Wiltshire
and Gloucestershire, and in that district the trade in fine cloth
is still chiefly centred. In point of quantities produced, how-
ever, and of persons employed, the West Riding of Yorkshire
woollen cloth districts far outstrip the West of England, and are
the true centres of all industries connected with wool. Of woollen
cloths of all kinds the towns of Leeds and Huddersfield are the
most important producers. The shoddy trade has been specially
developed at Batley and Dewsbury, and the numerous manufac-
tures of worsted have their principal centre in Bradford and the
populous district surrounding it. Norwich, at one time the capi-
tal of worsted manufactures, and a large producer of shawds, thanks
to the immigration of Flemings, has entirely lost its supremacy,
probably owing to the superior coal facilities of Yorkshire, but
it is yet the seat of no inconsiderable worsted manufacture. The
hosiery trade is developed chiefly in and around Leicester, and at
Kilmarnock the allied knitting of bonnets is a specialty. Flannels
and blankets are associated with Wales ; the carpet trade belongs
principally to Kidderminster, Halifax, Glasgow, and Kilmarnock.
Shawds are made in Paisley, Alva, and Alloa in Scotland, knitting-
yarns being a largely developed industry in the two last-mentioned
towns. Tweeds are the special industry of Hawick, Galashiels,
Dumfries, and Aberdeen, and also form an important part of the
manufactures of Leeds. (J. PA.)