WOOL-BUYING 149 



Shabby, thin-stapled, and tender wools give a much larger 

 percentage of noil than good, long-stapled sound wools, and as 

 Merino noils are usually worth 10 pence per Ib. less than the top, 

 this naturally affects the price of the raw wool considerably. 



Every buyer has a list of standard qualities by which he 

 classifies the diameters, or quality, of all the fibres of the wools 

 offered for sale in the market he is operating in. English buyers 

 buy on Bradford qualities, which vary from loo's, an exceedingly 

 fine Merino wool, to 28*8, a very coarse hairy wool. Particulars 

 of these qualities can be found in the chapter on "Wool- 

 sorting." 



The buyer, when examining the greasy or raw wool, puts it 

 down at, for example, say, 64*8 quality ; this would be the quality 

 of a good Australian Merino wool. The 64*5 top is worth, say, 

 26 J pence per Ib., and noil of the same quality say 16 pence 

 per Ib. The first thing the buyer does is to deduct the cost 

 of combing from the value of the top, combing charges for this 

 quality being 2\ pence per Ib. ; for example 



26^ pence per Ib. = Value of 64*8 tops 

 less 2| ,, = Combing charges 



24 = Value of scoured wool containing both top 



and noil 



The buyer estimates the wool to tear 9 to i, which means that 

 for every 9 Ib. of top returned there will be i Ib. of noil, or 

 i/ioth noil. 

 Therefore 



Value of scoured wool : 9 Ib. of top in every 10 Ib. of scoured product 

 = 21-6 pence per Ib., 



this being the value of the tops only, contained in scoured 

 product, to which must be added the value of the noil, which 

 we estimated to be i to 9, or i/ioth, valued at 16 pence 

 per Ib. 



Therefore i/ioth noil at 16 pence per Ib. = 1-6 pence per Ib., 

 being the value of the noils in scoured product, 



