Shepherdstown register. [volume] (Shepherdstown, Va. [W. Va.]) 1849-1955, 1890-06-06
Some Facts About Wool.

Wool is some kind of hair. The
hair is plant rooted in the skin.
Its root is cone, connected with the
sensitive layer of the skin, whence it
draws sustenance. Its life is not
identical with the life of the body,
for hair grows more or less after
death. This "root of the hair" exude
the hair pulp, which is formed into
cells containing the pigment giving
color to the hair, and each row of
these cells forms ring. As the
ring of cells is pushed away from the
skin by the giving out of fresh pulp,
from the root, the cells dry, and scales
are formed, almost like the scale Of
fish. A hair seen through a micro
scope is thus long tube formed by
sheath made up of these rings of
scales. The human hair is usually
long, straight and regular, and the
scales are so fine and so close togeth-
er that the edge appears like the
teeth of a very small saw. Goats
hair has more rapid growth and
longer cells, so that it is less regular
and straight, and little of the tooth
like edge. The hair of sheep of the
common sorts is also irregular, with
tendency to curl or wave, but with
marked tooth-like edges. This is
wool, and it is the tendency to twist
and the barbed projections which
give this fibre its peculiar advantages.
But through all this range nature
shows such close gradations that it
would be difficult to draw an exact
line between hair and wool, or in
this respect to separate the sheep
from the goats. Witness the Angora
goat, whose fleece, known as mohair,
is reckoned superior wool, and the
Peruvian alpaca, or llama. The mi
croscope distinguishes very clearly,
however, between wool and silk, the
fibre of which is an even double fila
ment of gum exuded by the silk
worm, and between wool and the
vegetable fibres, such as cotton,
which, growing as tubedries into a
half:twisted ribbon, having no barbed
edge. The root of the hair has a
natural tendency to dry up as warm
weather approaches, allowing the
hair to fall free from the skin thus
animals "shed their coats" But
when hair is cut, as with human be-
ings, or the fleece sheared, as in the
case of sheep, nature adapts itself to
the demand upon it, and growth is
continuous. The number of these fl
bres is wonderful. On the pelt Of a
full-blood ram, DR.. Cutting, Of the
Vermont Board of Agriculture, reck-
oned with his microscope 222, 800 to
the square inch; and ordinary open
wool sheep will have one-thirtieth as
many.
The cultivated sheep, yielding the
fine, regular woods for which modern
machinery calls, has been, like that
machinery, virtually the development
of the last hundred years, and with
the modern race-horse, furnishes
most extraordinary examples of zoon-
omy as an intelligent art. Of these
woods two distinct colors are recog-
nized. The longer staples, in which
also the fibre is straighter and the
barbs less marked, are called "comb-
ing WOOL" because they are straight
ened out, much as hair is, by combs,
and laid flat together for spinning in
to the.smooth, hard, tightly twisted
yarns which make the fine, hard-in-
ished fabrics called "worsteds"-so-
named from the village of Worstead,
in Norfolk, where Flemish weavers,
brought over by Edward III. about
1881, made this kind of goods. The
shorter staples, more curly and with
marked barbs, are called "carding
wools," because they are treated by
cards, like the curry-comb used for
horses, before spinning, and these
make the "woolens" proper, thicker
and softer and more like felt. The
shorter woods also make felt, which is
produced not by weaving, but by mat
ting or beating together the fbres,
until the barbs of the wool catch into
each other, and thus make a contin-
uous fabric, somewhat as paper is
made. But these woods grade into
each other imperceptibly-na
rarely jumps; and the invention of
improved combs has broughtinto Sc