136 THE CULTURE AND USE OF TEASELS. 
The American Model Collar Company employ in this manufactory 
seventy neatly-dressed intelligent looking American women, most of 
whom are young. These women earn a dollar per day, and their work 
is clean, healthy, and not very laborious. Mr. Gray, who first com- 
menced to manufacture in the spring of 1863, has now eight patents on 
collars and machines, having previously secured them in Europe ; three 
of the directors of the company went there this summer with skilled 
mechanics and American machinery, to take measures to establish the 
manufacture in England, France, and Belgium, where they will pro- 
bably soon attain that popularity which the American model collar has 
achieved in this country. — ' American paper.' 
THE CULTURE AND USE OF TEASELS. 
Although teasel heads are now very generally superseded by belts of 
fine wire cards, worked by machinery, yet it may be interesting to 
furnish a few particulars about this special culture, which is still carried 
on very generally in this country, in North America, and on the 
Continent. 
The fuller's thistle (Dipsacus fullonum),is cultivated in Yorkshire and 
other woollen cloth manufacturing districts for its rough flower heads, 
which are used in raising the nap upon cloths, which is done by means 
of the rigid hooked awns or chaff of the heads. The teasel throws up 
its heads in July and August ; these are cut from the plant with a 
peculiarly formed knife, and then fastened to poles for drying. When 
dry, they are picked and sorted into bundles. Upwards of twenty 
million teasel heads are annually imported into the United Kingdom 
from France. The use of teasel heads is to draw out the ends of the 
wool from the manufactured cloth, so as to bring a regular pile or nap 
upon the surface, free from twistings and knottings, and to comb off the 
coarse and loose parts of the wool. The head of the true teasel is com- 
posed of incorporated flowers, each separated by a long, rigid, chaffy 
substance, the terminating point of which is furnished with a fine hook. 
Several of these heads are fixed in a frame, and with this the surface of 
the cloth is brushed, until all the ends are drawn out, the loose parts 
combed off, and the cloth ceases to yield impediments to the free passage 
of the wheel or frame of teasels. 
Should the hook of the chaff, when in use, become fixed in a knot, 
or find sufficient resistance, it breaks, without injuring or contending 
with the cloth ; and care is taken, by successive applications, to draw 
the impediment out. The dressing of a piece of cloth consumes from 
1,500 to 2,000 heads. They are used repeatedly in the different stages 
