602 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



the State of New York, carted cotton from Southern Virginia to 

 New York, and then it was carried by sloops to Schodack, and 

 carted to his factory ; and he made a coarse cotton cloth, a con- 

 siderable part of the weight of which was starch, and sold it at 

 88 cts. per yard. A far better article can now be bought for 5 

 cents. The wool machinery sprung up at the same time, and 

 conforms in many particulars to the cotton machinery. The two 

 great provisions of nature for the clothing of man are the cotton 

 for the warm climates, and the cotton and wool for the cold cli- 

 mates. To bring into use any other fiber for the purpose of hu- 

 man clothing, even if that fiber is in its nature equally valuable 

 for clothing, that space of nineteen-tAventieths must be somehow 

 filled up before that new fiber can come into actual and conynon 

 use. Flax is not a single fiber. We obtain it only by breaking 

 up the natural fibers, not at their places of original joining, not 

 by removing the material that combined them, but by breaking 

 them absolutely into fragments. Having found crystals in wood 

 in proportion to its hardness, he had inferred that the hardness 

 and coldness of flax were due to the metallic and mineral crys- 

 tals contained in the fiber. An analysis shows that there are 

 from 2| to 4 per cent, of mineral and metallic matter in flax, 

 while cotton is simply cellulose, without a particle of mineral in 

 it ; hence, the flax is unsuited for wearing next the skin. Flax 

 is one of the most tenacious of all fibers, and, in proportion to 

 its width, one of the longest fibers known. So intensely close 

 are the joinings of the fibers that it is almost impossible to sepa- 

 rate them ; and when we attempt it, whether by explosion, by 

 the hatchet, by the hammer,, or by the swingling knife, it is only 

 split, and the fragments that chance to split unevenly are thrown 

 off in the shape of tow. It is impossible that hands or ma- 

 chinery should spin as even a thread of linen as the machine will 

 spin of cotton. Napoleon offered a reward of $30,000 for the 

 invention of a machine to spin flax as the English machines spin 

 cotton, but all attempts to accomplish it have failed ; and from 

 the nature of things, it seems impossible that it should be other- 

 wise. Until machinery is found to cut the fibers of flax into 

 even lengths, and split them evenly, it seems to be impossible, at 

 any rate, to draw flax' into thread with the same machinery now 

 in use for drawing cotton and wool. 



Mr. Veeder. — Fine cloths had been made of wools of different 

 staples, and wool and cotton were incorporated to a very great 



