The technique of sheep shearing, skirting, classing, packing and transporting has been brought up to a wonderful state of perfec tion in Australia, and the "get up" of the wool is usually much superior to the "get up" of the "home-clip." Wool Sorting.—Sorting or stapling was formerly a distinct industry, and to some extent it is so still, though frequently the work is done on the premises of the comber or spinner. Clothing wools are separated and classed differently from combing wools, and in dealing with fleeces from different breeds, the classification of the sorter varies. In the woollen trade short-staple wool is separated into qualities, known, in descending series from the finest to the most worthless, as picklock, prime, choice, super, head, seconds, abb and breech, and the proportions in which the higher and lower qualities are present are determined by the "class" of the fleece. In the worsted trade the classification goes, also in descending series, from fine, blue, neat, brown, breech, downright, seconds, to abb for English wools. The last three are short and not commonly used in the worsted trade. The greater proportion
of good English long wool will be classified as blue, neat and brown ; it is only in exceptional cases that more than from 5 to 8% is "fine" on the one hand, or of lower quality than breech on the other. Generally speaking, the best portion of a fleece is from the shoulders and side of the animal. The quality decreases towards the tail end of the sheep, the "britch" being frequently long, strong and irregular. The belly wool is short, worn and dirty, as is also the front of the throat, while on the head and shins the product is short, stiff and straight, more like hair than wool and is liable to contain grey hairs. The colonial wools come "classed," and consequently are only as a rule sorted into three or four qualities. Thus a 6o's fleece may be sorted into 56's, ordinary 6o's, super 6o's and skirtings.
The sorter works at a table or frame covered with wire netting through which dust and dirt fall as he handles the wool. Fleeces which have been hard packed in bales, especially if unwashed, go into dense hard masses, which may be heated till the softening of the yolk and the swelling of the fibres make them pliable and easily opened up. When the fleece is spread out the stapler first divides it into two equal sides; then he picks away all straws, large burrs, and tarry fragments which are visible ; and then with mar vellous precision and certainty he picks out his separate qualities, throwing each lot into its allotted receptacle. Sorting is very far removed from being a mere mechanical process of selecting and separating the wool from certain parts of the fleece, because in each individual fleece qualities and proportions differ, and it is only by long experience that a stapler is enabled, almost as it were by instinct, rightly to divide up his fleeces, so as to produce even qualities of raw material. Cleanliness is most essential if the wool sorter is to keep his health and not succumb to the dread disease known as "anthrax" or "wool-sorters' disease." Certain wools such as Persian, Van mohair, etc., are known to be very liable to carry the anthrax bacilli, and must be sorted under the con ditions imposed by government for "dangerous wools." Fortu nately wools can now be readily disinfected at the Government's station at Liverpool. Ordinary or non-dangerous wools are per fectly harmless from this point of view.