652 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1914. 
to an astonishing extent and result in the production of an infinite 
variety of small patterns. 
Figure 37 gives, for example, four designs, which can be made on a 
loom fitted with four heddles and four treadles. If the threads of 
warp and weft are coarse enough, and the former white and the latter 
black, the designs would show as distinctly when woven as they do 
drawn out in the diagram. 
There is not time, nor is it indeed necessary for our present pur- 
pose, to describe the way in which these designs are formed. All 
that is required is to note their possibility and to show how this pos- 
sibility affected the development of the loom itself. 
A further examination of this ancient Chinese loom will show that 
not only are there more than two treadles in use, but instead of the 
heddles being tied together in pairs, as for plain weaving, each hed- 
dle is connected with one of 
a set of levers which in. 
their turn are joined by a 
cord to the treadles. 
Figure 38 represents, with- 
out other details of the loom, 
two typical shedding mo- 
eee 86tlons, as any arrangement 
wie Meier = =for opening the shed for the 
“ weft is called. In both 
these motions, as in the Chi- 
nese loom, the arrangement 
is one of heddles, levers, and treadles connected together by cords. 
Below each diagram a longitudinal section of a loom at work is 
shown. 
Tt is interesting to note that these ancient shedding motions are 
still in use. Silk fabrics made on hand looms fitted with these mo- 
tions can not be equaled by webs woven on any machine loom yet 
invented. 
Figure 39 (pl. 9) which I drew from a Bethnal Green workshop, as 
it now is, shows a silk loom with precisely the same fitting up as the 
Chinese artist has drawn. 
To return to the shedding motions (fig. 38), in the right-hand 
figure the heddles A A have lead weights, B B, on their lower 
shafts. If, therefore, any of the four heddles be wiieed) as soon as 
they are Paleaged the weights will bring them down to their normal 
position. At the top of the loom, ice C, four short strong levers 
are fixed on an iron rod, which passes through a hole in their centers. 
From one end of each of these levers a heddle is suspended ; and from 
the other end a cord hangs and connects each short lever with a long 
Fic. 37.—Simple designs. 
