3. It must have the proper staple (length). 4. It must be of a certain softness or hardness. 5. It must have the proper felting qualities if the material is to be fulled. 6. It must either scour white, or else have sufficient lustre to take dyes. [Sidenote: _Clothing and Combing_] As we take up the manufacture of worsted and woolen yarns we shall see how these qualifications play a different part in the two processes. At the outset the only important difference we are concerned with is staple length. Generally speaking, wools under two inches are too short to be combed and are classed as clothing wools. _Clothing wools are used for woolens, combing wools for worsteds._ This applies only to wools of fine fibre. The mere fact that a wool has long staple length does not make it a combing wool. As a rule, the coarser the wool the longer its staple, and the longest wools are the exceedingly coarse “common” or “braid” wools, which can only be used for carpet manufacture. [Illustration: _Sorting Wool_] In grading and sorting, practically the only guide is the fineness of the individual fibre. The other qualifications just enumerated have a very important bearing on what the wool can be used for, but they have very little to do with its classification by grades. [Sidenote: _Classifications_] Fleece wools are graded by two systems, one by bloods, the other by counts spun. (This means the number of hanks of 560 yards each to a pound of yarn.) Domestic and foreign wools are usually graded by bloods. U. S. Territory wools are graded a little differently, as per second column below, and pulled wool is only roughly graded into four classes (third column). The blood classifications originated from the breeding of the sheep, but, as a matter of fact they have become arbitrary terms denoting a certain degree of fineness. The same fleece may, and frequently does, contain ½, ⅜, and ¼ blood wool. COMPARATIVE GRADES U. S. U. S. Pulled U. S. Counts Foreign Domestic Territory Spun Counts. Full blood (XX) Fine AA 60s 66-74s ¾ ” (X) ¾ 50s 60-66s ½ ” ½ A 40s 54-60s ⅜ ” ⅜ B 36s 48-54s ¼ ” ¼ B 32s 44-48s Low ¼ Low ¼ C 20s 40-44s Common Common C 16s 36-40s Braid Braid C 12s 32-36s [Sidenote: _Grading_] [Sidenote: _Skirting_] [Sidenote: _Sorting_]