JVooI in Relation to Science with Practice. 
323 
stated, is made a special branch of study : the nature and habits 
of the sheep require more study : little or no attention is 
ijiven to the action of external causes on the unshorn fleece. 
It has been said that the fineness of the pile of wool is pro- 
portioned to the fineness of the skin-pores. Fleischmann states, 
in reference to the persistent endurance of a single cross, that 
the original coarse German sheep have 5500 fibres on a single 
inch ; grades of the third or fourth merino cross produced about 
8000 ; the twentieth cross 25,000 ; whilst the pure merino 
had 40,000 to 48,000 ; so that twenty crosses were not sufficient 
to make the race pure merinoes.* Wool is finer at the bottom 
of a full-grown staple than at the top : in short, there are any 
number of interesting lines of scientific inquiry. Hairy African 
sheep, with yolk all baked out, might improve by removal to more 
favourable influences. Here is a statement constantly cited, which 
cannot be explained physiologically, and from a scientific point 
of view it is scarcely creditable that the thing is not finally 
I settled : If a lamb is suckled by a goat, the wool becomes hairy ; 
a kid suckled by a ewe, the hair becomes woolly ? 
I beg the reader to give his best attention to the following 
description, with diagram, by Professor Archer, explaining the 
essential character of wool. For this I am specially indebted 
to Her Majesty's Commissioners for the London International 
Exhibition of 1871 : — 
"The essential characters of wool can only be learned by a very careful, 
and even a microscopic examination of the material. Most of the terrestrial 
mammals with hairy coats produce two kinds of hair. The first and most 
apparent is that -which is usually called hair, the other which is generally 
shorter, and underlies the former, is called either ^L•ool or fur. Hair is almost 
I invariably cyUndrioal, with a smooth surface, whereas wool and fur are 
covered with scales, and some kinds have a waved or otherwise varied outline. 
The scales are of the utmost importance, and upon their number in a given 
space depends, in a great measure, the quality of the material. But besides 
being scaly, as shown in Fig. 4, wool from the sheep is also waved, as shown 
in Figs. 1 and 2, and in Fig. 3, the two former representing a single fibre of 
short and of long staple wool, the other a small lock of wool. Now it is 
attempted to show in Fig. 6 that the scales on .each fibre are only attached by 
their bases, so that if we bend one, its scales are lifted up and project, their 
points, however, being all in the same direction. And it is further intended 
by Fig. 5 to show that if two fibres are brought side by side in opposite 
' directions, the scales of one will catch in those of the other, and if we encou- 
rage this by mechanical means the result will be such an interlocking as will 
not easily be disconnected. Moisture will facilitate this combination very 
much, so that if a handful of wool be wetted and rubbed or beaten, the fibres 
will work into one another and form a compact mass. Upon this quality 
depends the shrinkage of flannels and other woollen goods when washed, and 
also the process called felting. The waviness of the fibres, too, enables them 
to remain intertwined when they have been spun into threads, and is, couse- 
* See ' Spooner on the Sheep.' London, 1 874. 
Y 2 
