ts. Spanish wool, once deemed indispensable, is now little
sought after. It is supplanted by our colonial wool, which is steadily
advancing in quality and quantity, while angora goat, and alpaca wools are
forcing their way into and enhancing the value of our stuff trade." . . .
"Machinery has marshalled before its tremendous power the wool of every
country, selected and adopted the special qualities of each. Nothing, in
fact, is now rejected. Even the burr, existing in myriads in South America
and some other descriptions of wool, at one time so perplexing to our
manufacturers, can now, through the aid of machinery, be extracted, without
very material injury to the fibre." . . . "In no description of manufacture
connected with the woollen trade has machinery been more fertile in
improvements than in what may be termed the worsted stuff trade."

"The power-looms employed, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, in the worsted
stuff trade, increased from 2,763 in 1836, to 19,121 in 1845 (and are
probably not far from 28,000 at the present time). Worsted goods formerly
consisted chiefly of bombazets, shalloons, calamancoes, lastings for ladies'
boots, and taminies. Now the articles in the fancy trade may be said to be
numberless, and to display great artistic beauty. These articles, made with
alpaca, Saxony, fine English and Colonial wools, and of goats' hair for weft,
with fine cotton for warp, consist of merinoes, Orleans, plain and figured
Parisians, Paramattas, and alpaca figures, checks, etc."

The machines for combing and carding, of the most improved make, will work
wool of one and a half inch in the staple, while for the old process of hand-
combing four inches was the minimum.

But we must not enter further into these details, as it is our purpose rather
to indicate the interest and importance of certain manufactures than to
describe the process minutely.

The Yorkshire woollen manufacture is distributed over an area of nearly forty
miles by twenty, occupied by clothing towns and villages. Leeds, Bradford,
Halifax, Huddersfield, Dewsbury, and Wakefield, are the great manufacturing
centres. Mixed or coloured cloths are made principally in villages west of
Leeds and Wakefield; white or undyed cloths are made chiefly in the villages
occupying a belt of country extending from near Wakefield to Shipley. These
two districts are tolerably distinct, but at the margins of the two both
kinds of cloth are manufactured. F