A recent development is a combination of both principles in one machine. Mr Edward Kohler patented a machine which will produce either a lock-stitch or a chain-stitch, as may be desired, and an embroidery stitch as well. By a very ingenious contrivance the machinery is altered by the simple movement of a button, and (when the chain-stitch is required) the taking out of the bobbin from the shuttle. If the embroidery stitch is wanted, the button is turned without removing the bobbin, and the lock-stitch and chain-stitch are combined in one new stitch, with which very elaborate effects can be produced. It is said that the Kohler principle can be easily adapted to all, or most, existing machines.
WOOL.--What is Wool?--Chemical Composition--Fibre--Antiquity of Shepherd Life--Varieties of Sheep--Introduction into Australia--Spanish Merino--Wool Wealth of Australia--Imports and Exports of Wool and Woollen Produce--Woollen Manufacture.
COTTON.--Cotton Plant in the East--Mandeville's Fables about Cotton--Cotton in Persia, Arabia, and Egypt--Columbus finds Cotton-yarn and Thread in 1492--In Africa--Manufacture of Cloth in England--The American Cotton Plant.
What is wool? 'The covering of the sheep, of course,' replies somebody. Yes; but what _is_ it? Let us ask Professor Owen. 'Wool,' he says, 'is a peculiar modification of hair, characterised by fine transverse or oblique lines from two to four thousand in the extent of an inch, indicative of a minutely imbricated scaly surface, when viewed under the microscope, on which and on its curved or twisted form depends its remarkable felting property.' At first sight this definition seems bewildering, but it will bear examination, and is really more tangible than, for instance, Noah Webster's definition of wool: 'That soft curled or crisped species of hair which grows on sheep and some other animals, and which in fineness sometimes approaches to fur.' It is usually that which grows on sheep, however, that we know as wool, and the number of imbrications, serratures, or notches indicates the quality of the fibre. Thus, in the wool of the Leicester sheep there are 1850--in Spanish merino, 2400--in Saxon merino, 2700, to an inch, and the fewer there are the nearer does wool approach to hair.