WOOL AND WOOLLEN MANUFACTURE. 93 



consequently being scarcely twisted at all, the peculiar woolly surface 

 can be given to the blanket by the subsequent processes. 



Worsted yarn is largely employed as a weft with a warp of cotton 

 (in some cases of silk) for the production of fancy dress goods ; these 

 frequently have a check .stripe, or figure of silk introduced upon the 

 surface ; recently also mohair yarn (the hair of the Angora goat spun), 

 has been employed as a weft for stuffs. 



Felting. — Wool and hair can be felted, that is made into a dense 

 and compact cloth without the intervention of the processes of spinning 

 or weaving. So great is this tendency that in a flock bed, the carded 

 wool of which it is made is constantly felting itself into lumps, and 

 from time to time the bed requires to be taken to pieces and the wool 

 has to be carded afresh. With some animals, which possess a fine and 

 soft fur such as Skye terriers and Persian cats, every one must have ob- 

 served that the hair felts itself into ugly masses. 



This felting property of wool and certain kinds of hair is caused by 

 a peculiarity in the structure which may be detected under the micro- 

 scope, the filaments are notched or jagged at the edges — the teeth in- 

 variably pointing upwards, that is from the root to the point. A barley- 

 ear will travel up your coat sleeve by the slight friction between it and 

 your arm, because it possesses the same structure — but it will not move 

 downward — so the fibres of wool moving in one direction only when 

 subjected to gentle friction, mat together and form the kind of cloth 

 called Felt. This felting property of wool is greatly assisted by the 

 peculiar crimp in the fibre which it retains with great pertinacity, and if 

 drawn out straight it immediately contracts again on being released, 

 thus the forward motion of the fibre under friction is partly coun- 

 teracted or converted into a circular or zig-zag movement, which is pre- 

 cisely that which most completely effects the matting together of the 

 various fibres. 



Wool in the yolk, that is with the natural grease adhering to it can- 

 not be felted — the roughness of the fibre being in that case smoothed 

 over by the oil — were it otherwise the wool would felt on the sheep's 

 back and be comparatively useless. 



As St. Blaise is the patron saint of wool-combers for no better reason, 

 so far as I can ascertain, than because the unfortunate martyr before he 

 was beheaded (A.D. 289) was tortured by having his flesh torn with iron 

 combs ; so St. Clement is the patron saint of the felting brotherhood, for he 

 is said to have placed carded wool in his sandals to protect his feet during 

 a pilgrimage, and to have found at its close that the wool had felted 

 itself into cloth ; thus rendering himself the reputed discoverer of felt. 



The process of Felting, however, claims a far earlier origin, and was 

 probably discovered before weaving. Felt was anciently in ordinary use 

 among the Medes, the Persians, and the Bactrians. The Greeks were 

 acquainted with its use as early as the age of Homer, and the Romans 

 seem to have obtained their knowledge of felt from the Greeks. 



