latch hinged to the bed of the machine. The cup and bobbin are prevented from partaking of the rotatory movement by a steel spur projecting from the cup, and fitting loosely into a notch in the latch. Tension upon the under thread is obtained by passing it under a tension plate upon the bobbin cup. Twisting of the thread is by these means entirely obviated. In this apparatus, the disk-like appearance of the bobbin is partially lost in its considerable breadth, and there is thus a distinct departure from the lines of the ring shuttles before mentioned. The diagrams exhibit the hook in several positions during its revolution, and the position of the threads corresponding thereto. [Illustration: FIG. 2] _Fixed Rotating Hooks_.--Wilson's rotating hook for lock stitch machines, and Gribbs' hook for single thread machines, are both well known. In the year 1872, the Wheeler & Wilson company introduced a new hook, forming an improvement upon Wilson's original device (Fig. 3). Its chief peculiarity consists in the extension of the termination of the periphery, forming a long tail piece, quite overlapping the point, and serving as a guard, both to keep off the bobbin thread and to prevent collision between bobbin and needle. [Illustration: FIG. 3.] This improved class of hooks are provided with a much deeper cavity than those first introduced, an arrangement permitting of the employment of a more commodious bobbin, which is generally covered by a cap, as in the revolving shuttle, but free to revolve. In some cases the cap carries a tension plate preventing its revolution with the hook. But beyond these improvements on Wilson's original device, the utility of the hook mainly depends upon two things quite apart from the hook itself. These are the dispensing with the old fashioned check brush and the use of a positive take-up. Thus, in the original machine, the stitch was pulled up by the succeeding revolution of the hook. For while one revolution sufficed to cast it over the spool, a second turn was requisite to complete the stitch. In this way, to make a first stitch with such an apparatus required two turns of the rotating hook. The improvements mentioned enable the machine to complete a stitch with one turn of the hook--an important step in advance, when we consider that by the old method each length of slack thread must be tightened up solely through the fabric and the needle eye. But this particular arrangement bears so much upon the introduction of the positive take-up itself that further reference to it must be reserved until that device has been described. _Simple Thread Hooks_.--The best known of these is Willcox & Gibbs. It has been so often described, that no further reference to it may be made. It continues to make the same excellent twisted stitch as it produced twenty-five years ago.