SPINNING. Whatever be the substance operated upon by the spinner, whether cotton, wool, flax, or silk, it is necessary in the first place to lay the fibres or filaments parallel with each other, so as to form them into a soft continuous ribbon or cord, sometimes called a sliver. Excepting in the case of flax, this is done by a carding or combing process, the object of 'which is to disentangle and straighten the tangled filaments. If such a sliver or cord be firmly griped or compressed at two points rather farther apart than the average length of its component filaments, it may be extended or drawn out to a greater length ; the filaments sliding upon each other. When two or more such cords have been ex tended in this way, until they will stretch no longer without separating or being pulled asunder, they may be laid parallel to each other, and combined by being slightly twisted together. The compound cord thus formed may be again extended by stretching or draw ing; and the repetition of the processes of doubling, twisting, and stretching will enable the spinner to extend the length and diminish the thickness of the cord until it becomes a fine compact thread or yarn.
The primitive modes of spinning by the spindle and distaff, and by the spinning-wheel, which are still extensively practised in the East, and not entirely superseded in some remote districts of Scotland, only enable the spinner to produce a single thread; but with the almost automatic spinning-machinery which has been called into existence by the cotton manufacture, one individual may pro duce nearly two thousand threads at the same time. The history of the series of inventions by which this result has been gradually attained is briefly noticed in the articles Anx WRIGHT and COTTON SPINNING. In respect to flax, the preliminary processes are described under Ilex. As the fibres of flax have not the same tendency to mutual entanglement as those of wool and cotton, it is necessary to moisten them with water to make them adhere to each other during the process of spinning, and also to render them more pliable and easy to twist. Until recently, cold
water was used for moistening the flax for machine spinning ; but the substitution of hot water for that purpose has been found a great improvement. We must refer to the same article (Fn .x] for an account of the present efforts to improve and extend this important The manufacture of yarns or threads of silk is a process essentially different from the spinning of cotton, wool, or flax. Instead of combining a number of short fibres into a long thread, the silk-throwster receives the silk in the form of very long and exceedingly fine filaments, which merely need cleansing and twisting together until the requisite strength is attained. The twisting process is, in this case, called spinning. There is how ever besides the best portion of the silk, which is wound off from the cocoon, a quan tity of loose or floss silk, which forms a soft tangled mass enveloping it. This, with the refuse of the superior part of the silk, under the general name of waste, is converted into yarns for coarse or inferior articles, by a pro cess very similar to that of spinning other fibrous substances. This waste silk was for merly cut by a machine, to reduce its filaments into short lengths, and then treated much in the same way as cotton wool; but the process of manufacturing it into yarns has been re cently much improved by the adoption of contrivances similar to those used in flax spinning, by which the filaments are heckled or drawn out into a sliver without being cut. The spinning of hempen fibres into cordage is described under ROPE MANUFACTURE. In many of the smaller kinds of ornamental spun-work, Ca0UtehOtte or India rubber is now largely used. ['Non. RUBBER MANIT1 FACTURE.]