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textile fabrics. Hence it seemed desirable to record some of 
the changes and improvements made in the principal 
machines employed in our cotton mills. Of these the mule 
jenny is perhaps the most important, and the successive 
changes it has undergone give a fair type of the gradual 
progress of mechanical inventions generally. 
Great inventions may come perfect from the head, but 
seldom, or never so, from the hand of their authors. Thus 
the Crompton mule (as before stated) underwent many useful 
changes by the shill of others, which prepared it for the 
inventions to render it self-acting. In the foregoing account 
of the labours bestowed on the mule 1 have given the names 
and claims of the inventors as they appear in their several 
patents, and I may assume that the public will desire to have 
* 
the simple facts relating to the parties concerned, thus 
plainly set forth. 
