DOMESTIC SHEEP. 



2'J'J 



If a number of fleeces be opened, the wool of short staple will easily bo distinguished from thnt 

 which is long. The former, if examined microscopically, exhibits an immense number of little feathery 

 serrations on its surface differing in this respect from human hair so that by the felting process the 

 individual fibres are locked into one another, and this wool is consequently most used in our woollen 

 cloth manufactures. The longer wool, not having so many serrations, is better adapted to combing, so 

 that all the fibres may be unravelled and laid smooth and even. 



Allusion has already been made to the impulse given to the woollen manufacture in the time <.f 

 Edward III., and doubtless that of worsted stuff's was introduced or improved at the same time, for in 

 the account of exports in the 28th year of his reign, mention is made of " 8,061 pieces of worsted, 

 at 16s. 8d. per piece." Waving the details of its subsequent history, it must suffice to say that, as the 

 county of Norfolk became then, and continued for four centuries, the main seat and centre of the 

 trade, Norwich became the wealthiest manufacturing town in the kingdom. When Queen Elizabeth 

 visited it in 1578, a grand pageant was exhibited, representing seven looms weaving worsted, missels, 

 darnic, &c., with various devices ; her Majesty, too, particularly " examined the knitting and spinning 

 of the children, peinised the looms, and noted the several works and commodities that were made." 



TCFT OP B-OOT., 

 NATL'HAL SliCK. 



A LOCK OF HAIR FROM A BULLOCK'S 

 HEAD (NATURAL SIZE). 



STEM AXD ROOT OF HITMAN* HAIR 

 (MICROSCOPIC REPRESENTATION'). 



This manufacture extended itself into other counties, par- 

 ticularly in the West Riding of Yorkshire, which previously 

 had been celebrated for woollen goods. It was, however, 

 entirely domestic, and its different branches were widely scat- 

 tered. ]>,ut in the year 1790 the first spinning-jenny was '- 

 put up in Bradford, in the private house of Mr. Garnett, a 



spinner, whose family still maintain a deserved eminence in the trade. Other machines 

 were now introduced, worked at first by hand, and thus occurred the great epoch of 

 the worsted trade. 



Though cotton stockings have greatly superseded worsted in England, and have 

 tended to make Nottingham what it is, yet the latter was the material on which 

 the first knitting frames were employed. When William Lee violated the discipline of the Umversity 

 of Cambridge, was expelled, watched the fair creature he had married contrary to the statute, nursing 

 her little - one, yet nimbly plying her knitting-needles, he invented the stocking-frame to relieve 

 her toils, worsted was the material of the hosiery to which his genius gave so remarkable a rise. 

 Worsted is the only home produce which we have to apply to the hosiery manufacture, and the 

 warmest and strongest material employed for that purpose. 



About a century and a half ago, knitting frames first reached the Leicester district, but only 

 to be regarded with great disfavour; the artificers worked at night and secretly, and the prod,,,.,. 

 was hawked about the country. Nearly a century afterwards, a worsted-qpuraing machine waa 

 invented- and this greatly increased the resources of the Leicester stockinged. At the preseiU 

 time in 'Leicester and the neighbouring towns, there are probably I'ojMiO frames, all engaged in 

 the manufacture of hosiery, not simply confined to hose or stockings; for gloves, and 

 o-arments which arc made of the peculiar open, elastic webbing formed in the frame, now , 



