. . .  “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.  Flannels and baizes are the principal woollen articles made in and near Halifax, together with cloth for the use of the army.  Blankets are made in the line between Leeds and Huddersfield.  Bradford provides very largely the spun worsted required for the various manufactures.  Stuffs are made at Bradford, Halifax, and Leeds, and narrow cloths at Huddersfield.  Saddleworth furnishes broadcloth and kerseymeres.  As a specimen of the variety of articles produced in one factory, take the following list, exhibited in the Crystal Palace by a Huddersfield manufacturer:—­“Summer shawls; summer coatings; winter woollen shawls; vestings; cloakings; table covers; patent woollen cloth for gloves; do. alpaca do.; do. rabbits’ down do.; trowserings; stockingnett do.”