THE JOURNAL OF PHARMACOLOGY. 229 



curs in the fulling and if the cloth is shorn many wool fibers, especially if 

 the material is thin, are cut. Added to this is the fact that often clip- 

 pings from cloth shearing are fulled (milled) into cloths in order to im- 

 prove the surface of the felt and to increase its weight. Such materials 

 then contain numerous threads .5 to i cm. in length, which may not 

 be termed mungo. Furthermore, it is difficult and a waste of time to ac- 

 curately determine their length and then too natural wools vary in length 

 from 2.5 to 50 cm. and more. Some artificial v^ools are longer than many 

 real wools. 



An addition of very short fibers can be ascertained by rubbing the 

 sample with a stiff bristly brush. More than one-half per cent, of fibers 

 will never fall from both sides if the sample was of good quality, but if 

 there is a decided increase in this amount a more thorough examination is 

 required. The brushings thus obtained will serve as good material for a 

 closer histological and chemical examination as well as for dye, with ref- 

 erence to shoddy ; for if shoddy is present in the fabric the brushings will 

 chiefly consist of it, the fibers of shoddy being shorter and more wiry than 

 real wool, and for this reason it will be easy to determine the properties of 

 the .shoddy from the former, which will be spoken of further on. It is well 

 to state here that fulled cuttings generally have two sharpl5'-cut surfaces. 



3. Their thickness is, as has been stated (i), a feature not to be de- 

 pended upon. The more uniform the threads of a woolen fabric are in 

 thickness the easier it will be to look at it. Conspicuous (noticeable) uni- 

 formity in thickness of the separate threads in the same fabric occurs only 

 in the case of finer wools, as the coarser (wools), on account of the occur- 

 rence of grannen hairs next to the finer wool hairs, are very unevenly 

 sorted. 



Only then when the thickness varies much and is associated with dif- 

 ferences in the quality of the sheep's wool threads themselves may the pres- 

 ence of shoddy be inferred. 



4. Histological characters of shoddy. Good sheep's wool nearly always 

 shows a distinct epiderm which consists of diversely- formed scales, but, as 

 already has been said, certain domestic wools lack the epiderm at their tip, 

 whereas they otherwise show the normal structure. Therefore the absence 

 of .scales on fibers of sample cannot, on the whole, prove the presence of 

 artificial wools, even if one-fourth to one-third of the coarser fibers have no 

 scales. For it is a fact that many domestic wools, even on living animals, 

 are without scales for quite a distance below the tips ; this refers to the 

 coarse and long grannen hairs only (which constitute the chief bulk of the 

 domestic wools). The real wool hairs of the domestic sheep, which are 

 outstripped and protected by the longer grannen hairs ; and of the mer- 

 inos, which are covered and pasted with fatty exudation, especially on the 

 outer staple, are either never without scales, or they occur so seldom that 



