If the cotton is of fine quality it is beaten, or _batted_, with hazel or holly twigs. For this purpose, it is spread on a frame, the upper part of which is made of cords and is quite elastic. A woman, with a rod about three or four feet long in each hand, beats the cotton with great violence, and so entirely separates the fibre. Any loose impurities which remain fall out between the cords; seeds and fragments of seed-pods, which adhere to the cotton somewhat firmly, are picked out by hand. By this method the cotton is thoroughly opened, and made quite clean, without injuring the staple. [Illustration: Opening the Cotton.] The coarser qualities are passed at once from the willow to the _scutching_ or _blowing machine_, which does the work of batting, only in a more violent manner, and is therefore not adapted for fine qualities; but in coarser spinning is in general use, to prepare the cotton for the carding engine. The cotton, which is still in a confused and tangled state, has now to be carded, upon the regularity and perfection of which process depends much of the success of spinning, and also the durability and beauty of the stuff to be woven. A cotton card is a sort of brush, containing wires instead of bristles. The cards are made of bands or fillets of leather, or are formed of alternate layers of cotton, linen, and india-rubber pierced with numerous holes, in which are fixed bent pieces of iron wire, called dents or teeth. The fibres of the cotton are not yet sufficiently level to be twisted into yarn; and it often happens that the teeth of the card lay hold of a fibre by the middle and thus double it together, in which state it is unfit for spinning. The cardings are therefore doubled and drawn out by a machine called a _drawing frame_, the principle of which depends upon different pairs of rollers revolving with different degrees of rapidity. If, however, the riband, as it leaves the carding-engine, were simply extended in length by drawing it out, it would be liable to tear across, or to be of a different thickness at different parts of its length. To prevent the tearing and to equalize the thickness, a number of cardings are joined together and drawn out to a length equal to the sum of the length of all the separate cardings. The effect produced is the same as taking a piece of cotton wool between the finger and thumb and drawing it out many times, laying the drawn filaments over each other, before each drawing. If the cotton be then examined it will be found that all the fibres are parallel and of equal length. This effect is accomplished very perfectly in the drawing frame, which consists of a number of rollers arranged in what are called _heads_, each head consisting of three pairs of rollers, of which the second pair moves with greater speed than the first, and the third moves quicker than the second. [Illustration: Drawing. Thread Frame.]