450 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 Nov., 1899. 
country, that exhibited in a remarkable degree that mild and gentle clastic 
so desirable to the spinner. The first-mentioned class had the blood of Bnglis 
sheep in their veins ; they descended from some crossbred South Australian rams, 
and run on a Darling Downs station. The last-mentioned ones had descended 
from Glengallen rams (first importation), and lived in the Burnett district— 
country where wool of the highest quality may easily be grown, provided the sheep 
are kept away from unsound portions of the district. I merely mention this to 
show that we must not rely too much upon our superior country and climatic 
influences; but that elasticity af well as many other desirable qualities are 
chiefly to be obtained through careful breeding. 
The Felting Property.—Felting property is that peculiarity of many kinds of 
hair or wool which shows itself in the great tendency of those horny products to 
entangle themselves easily with each other into such disorderly position that they 
cannot be taken out of it again unless by means of force, and not without partly 
being destroyed ; for instance, the felt of hats, the felt cloaks of the Russian 
soldiers, the felt tents of the Khirgiz and Calmucks, which are manufactured 
out of very short hairs. Any kind of hair or wool may be put into this dis- 
orderly combination by means of repeated pressure being employed, such as 
beating-with sticks, walking on it or pressing it between rollers, &c. The process 
of felting is considerably assisted through the application of heat, moisture, and 
chemicals such as soap, fuller’s earth, &c. A felt is, therefore, a close dense 
combination of many kinds of hairs or wool by means of their being thoroughly 
entangled within each other, or by being placed in all directions. Youatt and 
others have tried to find out why it is possible to felt animal hair and not vege- 
table fibres. The reason seems to be that vegetable fibres are mostly wanting 
in elasticity. Youatt believes to have found the reason of it in “the serrated or 
feathered edge of the wool fibre,” and he tries to prove that the phenomenon of 
felting is almost exclusively to be accounted for by that. I have already 
pointed out Youatt’s error; and by proving “that the wool and other kinds of 
animal hair that felt comparatively easily have no serrated or feathered edge, but, 
that their surface is, to all practical purposes, exquisitely smooth,’ Youatt’s 
theory would be at once refuted. The question, however, is, of so much interest 
to the woolgrower that I shall devote a little more attention to it. 
The first point in Youatt’s theory—namely, that the surface of the wool 
has a feathered and serrated edge—is founded on error. The edges of the 
epidermal scales protrude very slightly ; if they did, the bulk of the wool fibres 
would feel very rough, and the roughest wools would felt easiest. This is quite 
a mistake; the smoothest and silkiest wools felt easiest. Youatt further remarks 
that a staple of wool does not felt if left in its natural position ; thatit is necessary 
to break the staple into half, and unite the two halves again in an inverted posi- 
tion, so that the edges of the serrations should be placed face to face. ‘This, 
again, is incorrect, and anyone can easily convince himself that a natural wool 
staple will be changed into a solid cord of felt without interfering in the least with 
the parallel position of the fibres. In order to understand the nature of the 
felting property thoroughly, we must not overlook that the smoothest of hairs 
are liable to be felted. Horses will frequently turn their tails into solid masses 
of felt by repeatedly beating them against their bodies. I have examined many 
tails of horses brought in from wild mobs, and haye noticed that in almost ever 
case. The peculiar malady of the human hair, called Plica polonica, Tht 
occurs not unfrequently in the district adjacent to the Vistula, is another instance 
of an almost spontaneous felting process of perfectly smooth hairs. Then, 
again, we have the fact that a number of short and smooth hairs, such as the hair 
of horses, cattle, and camels, may be turned into most perfect felts. All these 
instances disprove the theory of felting as originating from a serrated edge. 
It must be adinitted that a number of fibres with a smooth surface will 
move alongside each other much more easily than those with a serrated edge, 
particularly if these are placed opposite each other. The easy way in which 
string, twine, or the smooth human hair are entangled will serve as a proof of it. 
