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GENERAL REPORT OF THE JUDGES OF GROUP IX. 59 part of this century, with the step of a giant. The means of fabrica tion were so ameliorated, in the short space of a quarter of a century, that the spinning of Merino wools attained a fineness and regularity once impossible with the best hand-spinning. The machines turned out lengths of yarn of 200,000 metres to the kilogramme, from a kind of wool which, twenty-five years before, would scarcely have produced 50,000 metres; and the price of the unit of weight of an identical article had descended from eighty to fourteen francs, although the prices of labor had increased.” Among the exhibits of the house of Auguste Seydoux, illustrating the material from which their famous merinos, cashmeres, and challis are made, were weft yarns of Aus tralian combed wool of the fineness of 109,120 yards to one pound. It is unnecessary to enlarge upon the beauty and perfection of the merinos, cashmeres d’Ecosse, and challis exhibited at Philadelphia. They are recognized throughout the world as inimitable, and as exhibiting the most perfect fabrics in the whole range of the textile industry. Another reason for the French success in these fabrics is the special ization of different branches, and the fabrication of the same article, the spinning, weaving, and finishing forming the three great groups. This division of the fabrication into groups, according to Alcan, “ facilitates the labor, concentrates the aptitudes, regulates the pro duction, and contributes to ameliorate the results and the economical conditions. Specialization renders the industry accessible to all,—-to moderate fortunes as well as heavy capital.” The adoption of this system is now taking place in Philadelphia, with marked beneficial results. Another cause must always give France the pre-eminence. The arbiter elegantiarum of the world in the fabrics of taste, she can impose, by her imperial sway upon the followers of fashion through out the world, the fabrics which she has created, leaving the other nations to supply imitations to the less fastidious masses. England, who did not do justice to herself by her display of worsted fabrics at Philadelphia, has attained success in another direction. She aims to supply the world with worsted fabrics adapted for the con sumption of the million. In extent of production and cheapness of fabrication she leads all other nations. It would be presumptuous to attempt, in the space allotted to this paper, even a sketch of her vast worsted-manufacture, while its characteristics, and the names of its principal fabrics, can be intimated, at least, under the head of our own worsted-manufacture, which is in the main copied from that of England. A feature of some of the higher classes of her worsted fabrics displayed at the Exhibition should not be passed without