surface of the leather which should preserve the same thickness throughout. The earliest improvement in this method consisted in having one card fixed, the other moveable, and, doubling the size of both, by this change the amount of labour was at once doubled, while the progress was still further facilitated by suspending the moveable card by means of a pully and balance-weight. Stock-cards, as these were called, had been employed in 1739, by Mr. John Wyatt, and were known even before that period, to woollen manufacturers. But the improvement par excellence in carding, was the application of rotatory motion; and, Mr. Paul Lewis, of Birmingham, is entitled to the merit of the original invention. He contrived two machines for the same purpose, the latter of which, with some improvements, continues to be employed. A horizontal cylinder, covered with parallel rows of cards, placed at equal intervals, was turned by a handle; and underneath was placed a concave surface, lined with cards, against which the teeth of cylinder-cards worked, upon turning the winch. The carded wool was stripped off by a stick with needles, disposed like the teeth of a comb, laid upon a riband, extended between two cylinders, and which wound upon one as it came off the other. Mr. Paul's invention laid the foundation of those subsequent introductions-the carding cylinder, the perpetual carding, and the stripping-comb, which it was reserved for those that followed to adopt. They originated in the factory of Wyatt and Paul, in Warwickshire, and were not in general use in Lancashire for twenty years subsequent to their discovery.

The actual machine erected in Paul's establishment, was purchased by a hatter from Leominster, and employed by him in carding wool; and, in 1760, Mr. Morris, of Wigan, applied it to the carding of cotton. After this epoch in its history, Mr. Peel erected a machine, consisting of several cylinders, at Blackburn; but, owing to the imperfection in stripping off the carded wool, laid it aside, until, by further improvements, it became that beautiful piece of mechanism which it now presents. A revolving cloth, called a feeder, gradually supplies the larger cylinder, from which the carded wool is stripped off by a smaller, called the doffer, or finisher. To take off the wool in a continuous fleece, a metal comb, finely toothed, is worked perpendicularly by a crank, and the sliver then being drawn through a funnel, is compressed into a flat riband, between two rollers, and falls at last into a deep can, where it coils in a continuous length.

Carding is followed by the operation of Drawing; as the ends are loose and tender, and not yet laid parallel, the filaments require to be made level in the ribands before any degree of torsion is communicated to them. Drawing accomplishes these objects of strengthening, extending, and equalizing the

CARDING, DRAWING, AND ROVING.

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cardings. The draw-frame consists of several heads of rollers, each composed of a pair of feeding and a pair of draw-rollers, the upper of each pair covered with some elastic substance, the lower of metal, fluted. The ends of the slivers contained in the cans being passed between two pair of rollers, the draw-pair travelling four times as fast as the feeders, are prolonged to four times their former length and tenuity; but, being passed through a ring, or funnel, in front of the rollers, they are again restored to their primitive substance. The united sliver falls into a can, and if four cans at the back of the frame have been emptied, an equal number in front will be filled, each can containing an equal portion of the four original cardings. By repeating the operations of drawing and doubling, each sliver will contain a portion of sixteen slivers; and, upon another repetition, it will include portions of sixty-four; the process is generally repeated till each shall contain portions of several thousand slivers.

The first process of spinning is denominated roving. The can-roving-frame may be called the invention of Arkwright, and continued for many years to be the principal machine for communicating sufficient torsion to the slivers. The slivers proceeding from each pair of cans are passed between two pair of rollers, and escaping from them, fall through a funnel into a revolving conical lantern. The risk of injury to which the roving was exposed, in its conveyance by the tenter from the lantern to the bobbin-machine, gave a character of imperfection to the whole mechanic structure, and this beautiful production of genius was at length superseded by one still more wonderful in its adaptations, "the Bobbin and Fly-frame.'

Vide, p. 10, et seq. Memoir of Sir Richard Arkwright.

HE old dock of Liverpool was appropriately called "the cradle of commerce;" for here the infant trade of this great port first found that shelter and protection, which made it grow with a rapidity unequalled in the history of our intercourse with foreign countries. In less than a single century of years, the custom's annual revenue of Liverpool having increased from £100,000, to nearly £4,000,000 sterling, the municipal authorities, and the dock trustees, felt it due to the importance of their trade, and the convenience of public business, that a more suitable building should be provided for the offices of Customs and Excise; one commensurate with the rank and commerce of the town; sufficiently capacious to include the principal government establishments for the collection of the revenue, and possessing grandeur of design, expressive of the improving taste of the inhabitants. Through the mediation of Mr. Canning, an arrangement was made with government, which permitted the immediate commencement of the undertaking; £150,000 were to be advanced to the corporation by the Treasury, in annual instalments of £25,000, on the condition, that the building was to be ceded to government at the expiration of twenty years. The site, valued at £90,000, was granted for the purpose by the corporation. This union of liberality and public spirit infused a degree of enthusiasm into all those who were to participate in the honour of raising this temple to commerce-a feeling of which none partook more ardently than the architect, Mr. Foster. His design met the immediate and unqualified approval of the Lords of the Treasury, as well as of the Board of Works; and on the