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GENERAL REPORT OF THE JUDGES OF GROUP IX. 47 cradle of the race, and still in use among the ruder tribes of the East, remained without progress for centuries, until revised, amplified, and made tributary to domestic comfort and the arts in all civilized com munities, by our own countrymen and in our own times. M. Kcep- pelin, a French expert, speaks thus, in the Antiales du Genie Civil of 1869, of this fabric: “ In spite of the simplicity of its fabrication, and in spite of the antiquity of its origin, felting was for a long time aban doned to the lesser industries. It is only within thirty years that the mechanical fabrication of felted cloths has been essayed. Many fruit less attempts in this direction were made in France and other coun tries ; and it is only to the spirit of invention of two Americans, Wells and Williams, that we owe the processes now in use, and which have not been materially modified since the epoch of their discovery.” Their processes, he says, were applied in France and England, and are used in the latter country for making printed felt carpets, exported in vast quantities all parts of the world, and popular from their great cheapness. No other published notice of this interesting invention has come within the notice of the writer. He has fortunately come into pos session of other facts in relation to the introduction of this im portant fabric, creditable alike to American ingenuity and British enterprise, which seem worthy of a detailed notice, because not hitherto known to the public. The facts are derived from a personal communication by a gentleman hereafter mentioned. Thomas Robinson Williams, of Newport, Rhode Island, connected with the Hazard family of that State, so well known as wool-manu- facturers, invented the process of making felt cloth of commercial length, at Rhode Island, about 1820. About 1824, he went to Eng land, for the purpose of introducing this invention, and also one for making hat bodies, in which he was associated with a Mr. Wells. He took out a patent in England in 1830. He succeeded in enlisting the co-operation of capitalists, who, about 1838, erected a factory in Leeds, with a capital and plant of ,£250,000, the designation of the proprietors being the Victoria Cloth Company. Meeting with imme diate success in the fabrication, the enterprise created a great excite ment in manufacturing circles, as it threatened to revolutionize the whole system of cloth-making. The principal editors of the London papers visited the establishment, and vied with each other in descrip tions of the new art. The Queen gave extensive orders for the stuffs, and the Mistress of the Robes—the Duchess of Sutherland—fur nished the grand staircase and vestibule of her London residence with a crimson carpet of the Williams felting, draping the windows