11 
mule was constructed, “ and which,” says he, “ appears to 
have been realised in the patent obtained, in 1847, by Mr. 
Matthew Curtis and Mr. Robert Lakin. Thus thirty years 
had elapsed from the time when Mr. Eaton gave the true 
principles for constructing a self-acting mule to that of their 
being carried into practical effect as above stated.” Now, I 
am acquainted with the specification of the patent taken out 
by Mr. Curtis and Mr. Lakin, in 1847. The invention 
described therein consists almost wholly, so far as it relates to 
the mule, of improvements, or alleged improvements, in some 
of the details of Smith’s and Roberts’s machines, and there 
is no reason to give it the character of the first really good 
working mule ever constructed. I have the pleasure of 
knowing Mr. Curtis and others connected with his firm, 
and I should think if they were inclined to claim such a 
character for any of their inventions, it would certainly not 
he for the one Mr. Dyer mentions. 
Nor is there any better foundation for the assertion that 
Mr. Eaton “ gave the true principles for constructing a self- 
acting mule,” &c. As I have already mentioned, Mr. Eaton’s 
invention only survived a few months, and there is no single 
particular of Mr. Eaton’s invention to he found in the self- 
acting mules now used, while, on the other hand, Roberts’s 
inventions form the basis of the great bulk of the self-acting 
mules now made, not excepting even those made by Messrs. 
Curtis and Co. themselves. It was Mr. Roberts, and not 
Mr. Eaton, who “ gave the true principles for constructing a 
self-acting mule.” 
The highest test of the efficiency of a self-acting mule is its 
capability of spinning the finer numbers of yarn, as, from the 
delicacy and accuracy of manipulation required in producing 
the very fine threads, it has been found very difficult to adapt 
the self-acting mule to that class of spinning. Mr. Roberts 
himself failed in this, as I have heard him admit in the wit- 
