1156 WOOL 



alternately wet and dry, the mere coagulation of the sap is not sufficient ; for although 

 the albumen contained in the sap of the wood is the most liable and the first to putrefy, 

 yet the ligneous fibre itself, after it has been deprived of all sap, will, when exposed 

 in a warm damp situation, rot and crumble into dust. To preserve wood, therefore, 

 that will bo much exposed to the weather, it is not only necessary that the sap should 

 bo coagulated, but that the fibres should be protected from moisture. 



Wood prepared with petroleum for sleepers, piles, poles, fencing, &c., is not affected 

 by alternate exposure to wet and dry ; it requires no painting, and after it has been 

 exposed to the air for some days it loses every unpleasant smell. 



For railway sleepers it is highly useful, as the commonest Scotch-fir sleeper, when 

 thus prepared, will last. Posts for gates or fencing, if prepared in this manner, may 

 be made of Scotch fir. The processes which have been introduced for impregnating 

 wood with the protosulphate of iron, corrosive sublimate, chloride of lime, and 

 similar substances, are also much employed, and many of them have been found 

 to be very useful as preservative agents. The tungstate of soda has been found to be 

 a useful preservative of wood. 



WOOF is the same as WEFT. 



wool. In reference to textile fabrics, sheep's wool is of two different sorts, the 

 short- and the long-stapled; each of which requires different modes of manufacture in 

 the preparation and spinning processes, as also in the treatment of the cloth after it is 

 woven, to fit it for the market. Each of these is, moreover, distinguished in commerce 

 by the names of ' fleece wools 'and ' dead wools,' according as they have been shorn at 

 the usual annual period from the living animal, or are cut from its skin after death. 

 The latter are comparatively harsh, weak, and incapable of imbibing the dyeing prin- 

 ciples, more especially if the sheep has died of some malignant distemper. The 

 annular pores, leading into the tubular cavities of the filaments, seem, in this case 

 to have shrunk and become obstructed. The time of year for sheep-shearing most 

 favourable to the quality of the wool, and the comfort of the animal, is during the 

 month of June the period when Lord Leicester holds his celebrated rural fete for 

 that interesting purpose. 



The wool of the sheep has been surprisingly improved by its domestic culture. The 

 mouflon (Ovis aries), the parent stock from which our sheep is undoubtedly derived, 

 and which is still found in a wild state upon the mountains of Sardinia, Corsica, 

 Barbary, Greece, and Asia Minor, has a very short and coarse fleece, more like hair 

 than wool. When this animal is brought under the fostering care of man, the rank 

 fibres gradually disappear ; while the soft wool round their roots, little conspicuous in 

 the wild animal, becomes singularly developed. The male most speedily undergoes 

 this change, and continues ever afterwards to possess far more power in modifying 

 the fleece of the offspring than the female parent. The produce of a breed from a 

 coarse-woolled ewe and a fine-woolled ram, is not of a mean quality between the 

 two, but half-way nearer that of the sire. By coupling the female thus generated 

 with such a male as the former, another improvement of one-half will bo obtained, 

 affording a staple three-fourths finer than that of the grandam. By proceeding in- 

 versely, the wool would be as rapidly deteriorated. It is, therefore, a matter of 

 the first consequence in wool husbandry, to exclude from the flock all coarse-fleeced 

 rams. 



Long wool is the produce of a peculiar variety of sheep, and varies in the length of 

 its fibres from 3 to 8 inches. Such wool is not carded like cotton, but combed like 

 flax, either by hand or appropriate machinery. Short wool is seldom longer than 3 

 or 4 inches ; it is susceptible of carding and felting, by which processes the filaments 

 become densely matted together. The shorter sorts of combing wool are used princi- 

 pally for hosiery, though of late years the finer kinds have been extensively worked 

 up into merino and mousseline-de-laine fabrics. The longer wools of the Leicester- 

 shire breed are manufactured into hard yarns, for worsted-pieces, such as bombazines, 

 poplins, crapes, Orleans, &c. 



The wool of which good broad-cloth is made should be not only shorter, but, 

 generally speaking, finer and softer than the worsted wools, in order to fit them for 

 the fulling process. Some wool-sorters and wool-staplers acquire by practice great 

 nicety of discernment in judging of wools by the touch and traction of the fingers. 

 The filaments of the finer qualities vary in thickness from -j^ to -^ 5 of an inch ; 

 their structure is very curious, exhibiting, in a good achromatic microscope, at 

 intervals of about %fa of an inch, a series of serrated rings, imbricated towards 

 each other, like the joints of Equisetum, or rather like the scaly zones of a serpent's 

 skin. 



The fleece of an average English sheep contains five distinct long sorts and three 

 short sorts. The short sorts grow on the belly of the sheep, the finest being under 

 the nock and tho fore-legs. Of the long sorts, the finest is on the shoulders. The 



