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advantageously improved in reeling the cocoons to any 

 given pattern or degree of fineness ; nor is there in fact 

 any more difficulty in it than in the manufacture of straw, 

 and many other employments which have engaged the at- 

 tention of our females. The time is not probably far 

 distant, when America will excel Europe in her silk 

 manufactures as much as she now does in her cotton. 



The great requisite in reeling is evenness and equality 

 in the threads. After the cocoons by reeling have been 

 converted into raw silk, that silk, before it can be used 

 in the manufactory of fine stuffs, must undergo the oper- 

 ation of throwsting, that is to say, twisting, which is done 

 by means of a machine called a throwing or throwsting 

 mill, and the mechanics who perform that work, are cal- 

 led silk throwsters. There are several of them already 

 in the United States, chiefly from England, but they have 

 as yet been rnosily employed in throwsting foreign silk, 

 imported chiefly from China. The operation of throws- 

 ting is the test of the good or bad reeling of raw silk. 

 If it be entangled, or not sufficiently freed from its gum, 

 the threads break in the preparatory operation of wind- 

 ing, and that occasions much loss. If the threads are 

 not equal, that is to say, if there is not in each thread 

 as nearly as possible the same number of fibres, as the 

 twisting is done by machinery which works by an equal 

 regular motion, the force which will only twist the strong 

 parts of the thread will break the weak ones, and that 

 with the loss by winding, produces what is called waste. 

 In proportion to the greater or less quantity of waste that 

 is found in raw silk is the price or value in foreign mar- 

 kets. 



Mr Du Ponceau has communicated to me a letter 

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