62 DICKSON ON THE 



should bring it a stage forward towards spinning ; therefore, I 

 shall consider the Flax in the store, and ready to be handed 

 to the next room ; the hand-haekler, who stands opposite a low 

 bench on which his hackles are screwed, having taken a hand- 

 ful of the rough Flax, throws about two-thirds of it over the 

 top of the hackle, and through this instrument, which is com- 

 posed of three or four dozens of fine steel teeth, the Flax is 

 drawn rather quickly ; he repeats the process several times, 

 and after turning his hand so as to clear out all the shorts 

 (called tow) over this coarse hackle, and changing the part he 

 first held in his hand, by holding what he had cleaned, until 

 he cleans the other end of the handful or " streik '' (as it is 

 called), he then hands it to another, who is more skilled 

 in working Flax on the finer tools, as they are called, and he, 

 after putting it through perhaps two sets of hackles, leaves it 

 ready for the sorting room. Another mode of preparation is 

 by the hackling machine, which I shall describe as a cylindri- 

 cal revolving implement with a number of hackles. This 

 machine is used for cut Flax, or rather I should say broken Flax, 

 about five or six inches long. Boys generally attend to the 

 feeding of this machine by holders made of iron, in which 

 they place a handful of Flax, and after using a hand-vice to 

 this holder, to screw the Flax so tight that it will not draw 

 out by the hackles, they place the holder on the wheel which 

 revolves and draws the flowing Flax through the fine hackle- 

 teeth until all the tow is cleaned out. This process is attended 

 to by changing the Flax in the holder until both ends are 

 dressed, and then it is carried to the sorting room, there to be 

 selected, according to the numbers to which it will spin FOR 

 WARP OK WEFT. The short fibre, or tow, as it is named, un- 

 dergoes a similar process, and can be spun r into very level 

 yarns for weft purposes. 



Hackling is a very dusty operation, and the only unpleasant 

 part of the business, as many particles of the Flax fly about, 



