WOOL. Wool is the soft elastic fiber which is grown on the domestic sheep. It so closely resembles the longer hairy fibres growing on the Llama, Alpaca, Angora and Cashmere goats that these fibres are imported under the name wool for commercial reasons.
\Youl is shorn from the sheep ordinarily once each year; however, there are some sec tions in which it is thought desirable on account of continued hot weather to shear twice each scar. The shearing season varies with climatic conditions but generally speaking it occurs early in the spring. In those sections where shearing is done twice each year, it is done in the spring and fall. Most of the sheep in the large wool-producing sections of the world are shorn by machine clippers. The remainder are shorn by hand shears or °blades." Skilful shearers can shear very rapidly, sometimes with machine clippers handling more than 2110 in a day of 10 hours.
The average shearer will probably shear 150 sheep each day. With the hand shears or 'blades° the number would be somewhat smaller. The amount of wool obtained from each sheep caries with the breed and the section from which it is obtained. Ordinarily from 3 to 12 pounds of wool are obtained from each sheep. An average fleece might be said to weigh from five to eight pounds.
According to the Bradford system of manu facture, wools are classed as °combing* of 'clothing.' A wool, to he combing, must be at least two and one-half inches in length, islule wools shorter than that are used for carding and are termed °clothing.' There is a •Strd class called 'carpet wools,* which includes •' e very coarse wnols and inferior wools not class of goods which the first two classes are used. Carpet wools are, however, either carded or combed. The introduction of the French comb has made it possible to comb wools of a shorter length than heretofore and many of the wools formerly used for carding or clothing are now combed with this comb and are known as °baby comb ing.' Another possible system of classifying wools divides them into four groups which take into account the breed of sheep and gives better defined divisions than the system mentioned above. These groups are: (I) Merino wool;
(2) British wool; (3) Crossbred wool; (4) Carpet wool. The breed of the sheep has • direct influence on the character of the wool and this fact makes such a system especially de sirable for classifying fleece wools, There arc more than 200 different breeds of sheep in the world, representing all grades of wool, from the finest to the coarsest. The entire wool production of the world for the year 1917 was 2,790.472220 pounds. Of this total the distribution is as follows: Eu rope, 793,400.043; Australia, 741,802,000; South America, 470,120,707; United States, 285,573, 000; Asia, 273,146,00d: Africa, 207,680.470, and a remaining 18,750,000, of which 11,400,000 is from British provinces of North America, 6,500,000 from Mexico, 750,000 from Central America and the West Indies, with 100,000 pounds from small oceanic countries not in cluded under any of the above classifications.
Carpet wools as the name implies are gen erally used in making carpets, Oriental rugs and also more or less in the coarser grades of clothing. For the most part they come from Asia and southeastern Europe. The crossbred wools from South America, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia have a considerable variation in grade and a wide range of uses. The British wools are from sheep of English blood and are divided according to the char acter of the wool into long and medium wools. The long wools are noted for their lustre and are classified in the trade as lustrous and semi or demi-lustrous, being used for fancy-dress goods, linings and braids where the lustre of the material is an important consideration. The medium wools are much finer than the long wools and were until recently used for woolens. Now with the improved combing machinery and the introduction of the French combs they are used for either woolens or worsteds. They come mostly from Great Britain and British provinces and the United States. Merino wools are our finest wools and are used for materials of very fine texture, either woolens or worsteds. These wools are produced in Continental Europe, Australia, South Africa, South America and the United States.