1. Men, in the primitive ages, were clad with the skins of animals, until they had acquired sufficient skill to employ a better material. It cannot be determined from history, at what time cloth began to be manufactured from animal or vegetable fibre; but it is evident, that it was done at a very early period, even long before the flood.

2. The fibres of the vegetable kind, most commonly applied to this purpose, are the bark of several kinds of trees, together with hemp, flax, and cotton; and those of the animal kingdom are, silk, the wool of the sheep and lama, and the hair, or wool, of the goat and camel.

3. That the general process of manufacturing cloth may be perfectly understood, the manner of performing several operations must be separately described. For the purpose of illustration, cotton, wool, and flax, will be selected; because these are the materials of which our clothing is principally fabricated. The operations of making cloth, may be comprised under carding and combing, spinning, weaving, and dressing.

4. Carding and Combing.—Wool and cotton are carded, with the view of disentangling the fibres, and arranging them longitudinally in small rolls. This is done by means of the teeth of two instruments, called cards, used by hand on the knee, or by the carding machine, which acts on the same principle, although far more expeditiously.

5. Machines for carding wool are to be found in every district of country in the United States, in which the people manufacture much of their woollen cloths in their own families. On account of the roughness of the fibres of wool, it is necessary to cover them well with grease or oil, that they may move freely on each other during the carding and spinning.

6. Long, coarse, or hard wools, used in the manufacture of camlets, bombazines, circassians, and other worsted fabrics, are not carded, but combed. In England, and in other countries where much of this kind of wool is used, wool-combing forms a distinct trade. The operation consists, chiefly, in drawing the locks through steel combs, the teeth of which are similar to our common flax-hatchel. The comb is heated to a certain temperature, to cause the fibres to straighten, and to remove from them the roughness which might otherwise cause the cloth made of them to thicken in washing, like flannel.

7. The old method of combing wool, however, has been in part superseded by the application of machines, the first of which was invented by Edmund Cartwright, of England, about the year 1790. The fibres of flax are arranged in a parallel direction, and freed from tow, by drawing them through a hatchel.

8. Spinning.—The process of spinning consists in twisting the fibres into threads. The most simple method by which this is effected, is that by the common spinning-wheel. Of this well-known machine there are two kinds; one of which is applied to spinning wool, cotton, and tow, and the other, to spinning flax.

9. This operation is, in most cases, performed by females in the following manner. The roll of cotton or wool is attached to the spindle, which is put in rapid motion by a band passing over it from the rim, or periphery of the wheel. While the spinster is turning the wheel with the right hand, she brings back from the spindle her left, with which she has laid hold of the roll a few inches from the upper end. When the yarn thus produced has been sufficiently twisted, she turns it upon the spindle, and repeats the same operation, until it is full. This yarn is formed into skeins by winding it upon a reel.

10. The mode of spinning tow is a little different. The material having been formed into bats by hand-cards, the fibres are drawn out from between the fingers and thumb by the twisted thread, while the spinster gradually moves backward. Worsted is spun from combed wool nearly in the same manner.