5 
already referred, viz., Baines’s History of the Cotton Manu- 
facture, as well as by other documents to which I need not 
now particularly allude. 
In speaking of the “ peculiar soft property ” possessed by 
the yarn spun upon the mule, as distinguishing it from the 
yarn spun by the machine called the “ throstle,” Mr. Dyer is 
quite correct. I believe it is not so generally known as it 
should be that the “ throstle,” as' the term is now generally 
understood, consists mainly of a combination of the leading 
features of Paul’s invention of 1738, which I have already 
mentioned, with those of a later invention, for which he 
obtained a patent in 1758. Mr. Dyer mentions the 
spindle and flyer as Arkwright's invention, but they had 
been in use upwards of one hundred and sixty years 
before the date of Arkwright’s inventions. This is proved 
by several of the works now in the library of the Patent 
Office, especially an Italian work, entitled “Novo Teatro 
di Machine et Edificii,” &c., and a pamphlet published 
in 1681, entitled “Some Proposals for the Employment 
of the Poor.” In Paul’s specification of 1738 we have 
the application of rollers moving at different velocities for 
drawing the material, and in that of 1758 the combination of 
rollers (of which only one pair are shown in the specification 
of the latter patent) with the spindle and flyer, by means of 
which the thread was twisted and wound upon a bobbin. So 
far as I have been able to ascertain, this is the first instance 
in which we have the material passing through rollers in its 
way to a spindle and flyer by which it is twisted and wound 
upon a bobbin, and we have here, clearly, the origin of the 
“ throstle.” Paul’s specification of 1758 describes these 
operations very minutely, but spinners acquainted with this 
class of machinery will at once perceive that the machine 
described in Paul’s specification, though displaying great 
ingenuity, was defective in one important particular, which 
