THE SAVINGS OF SCIENCE. 801 



indigenous rabbit-skins and 2,000,000 or 3,000,000 hare-skins are used 

 up in this country. The skins of those which are not used or dyed as 

 furs are, after the hair has been pulled for the hat-maker and for stuff- 

 ing beds, employed for glove-making. The hair is also now used for 

 making yarn and cloth. 



The wool manufacture, in almost all countries, now uses up cut- 

 tings of cloth and shreds of all kinds which were formerly thrown 

 away. These, and the strippings and waste in carding, are now classed 

 immediately after pure wool, and command relatively high prices. 

 There are many who may be disposed to regard the shoddy manu- 

 facture as a business to be despised, but the political economist dis- 

 covers in it a most important source of wealth wealth resulting from 

 the application of skilled labor to the utilization of material once 

 worthless, but now contributing no mean sums annually to the wealth 

 of nations. 



There are now 137 shoddy-factories, principally situated in the 

 Yorkshire district, which employ over 5,000 persons, 3,000 of whom 

 are females. About 40,000 tons of woolen rags are annually torn into 

 shoddy in England alone, and the quantity made in the United States 

 must be almost equal. No accurate data can be found of the Euro- 

 pean use of these articles, but an immense quantity of both shoddy 

 and mungo is now made and exported from the Continent, principally 

 to England, and it is probable that the whole of the world's annual 

 consumption is over 7,000,000 in value. At the recent International 

 Wool Exhibition, held at the Crystal Palace under my charge, there 

 were shoddies sent from most of the states of Europe. Italy first 

 began to work woolen rags into yarn in 1858, and most of the other 

 European countries followed the example. 



Raw silk having become scarce and dear of late years, much more 

 attention has been given to the employment of the different sorts of 

 silk waste, for which, at one time, scarcely any use could be found. 



The variety of these is very large, and most of them are now 

 profitably and extensively employed. The outside and inside husks 

 of the cocoons used to be mere refuse. These pass under various 

 trade names in different countries ; in England, as " knubs and husks " 

 and " floss silk " ; on the Continent, as botirre de sole, frisonets, and 

 floret. What is termed " yarn waste " is the waste made by the silk 

 throwster. The pierced cocoons, that have been eaten through by the 

 moths, are now largely employed in the preparation of chappe, or 

 schappe. Then there are the noils and thread waste from the silk-fac- 

 tories. 



In 1857 the imports of these waste silks were only 18,000 hundred- 

 weight, valued at 302,286. In 1881 the imports reached 540,119 

 hundred-weight, valued at 757,796. France, Switzerland, Germany, 

 Great Britain, and the United States have now entered extensively 

 into the utilization of silk waste for manufactures, which was formerly 



VOL. XXIII. 51 



