646 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1914. 
Figure 26 (pl. 7) is a full-sized mule spinning machine by Messrs. 
Dodson & Barlow (Ltd.), of Bolton, which works on the same princi- 
ple as Crompton’s mule and the Japanese girl I referred to just now. 
Figure 27 (pl. 7) is a ring spinning machine, working on the prin- 
ciple of this Italian peasant spinning wheel—the driven bobbin and 
the loose flier. 
[The lecturer here exhibited Italian and Belgian spinning wheels, 
having a driven bobbin and a loose flier, and demonstrated how simi- 
lar effects were obtained (1) by a separately driven bobbin and flier, 
(2) a driven flier and loose bobbin, and (3) by means of-a driven 
bobbin and a loose flier. ] 
In conclusion, as regards the spindle, although we may congratu- 
late ourselves on the performances of these wonderful thread-making 
machines and admire the inventive genius which has brought them 
to such perfection, it is interesting, though perhaps chastening and 
humiliating, to note that the untutored Hindoo spinner, squatting 
on the ground with a simple toylike spindle, can draw out and spin 
thread as fine, but infinitely stronger, than the most perfect machine 
of them all. 
I now resume the inquiry as to the development of the automatic 
loom from the point arrived at at the end of my last lecture. 
Four thousand years ago, more or less, probably at the time when 
the people of the stone age in Europe were cultivating flax and spin- 
ning and weaving its fiber into coarse cloth, the Chinese were invent- 
ing improvements in their primitive weaving appliances in order to 
adapt them to the weaving of an infinitely finer fiber than that of flax. 
This fiber was obtained by unwinding the case of the chrysalis of the 
mulberry-feeding moth, the caterpillar of which is familiarly known 
as the silkworm. 
Chinese continuous written history goes back to that remote period, 
and tells that the annual festivals of agriculture and sericulture, 
which are still observed by the Chinese, were instituted by an Em- 
peror and his wife, who themselves took leading parts in the festival, 
the Emperor plowing a furrow and the Empress unwinding some 
silkworm cocoons. This practice their successors have continued to 
the present time. 
This Empress is still highly honored in China, and votive offerings 
are made to her at the festival. She is held in great regard as the 
benefactress who taught the Chinese how to prepare the silken thread 
for use and to weave it, thus enabling them to become the best and 
richest clothed people in the world. This preeminence they have 
maintained owing to their original monopoly and expert knowledge 
of the cultivation and manipulation of. the strongest, finest, and most 
lustrous of all threads now called silk. 
