impurities passes through the bars. As before, another powerful
fan creates an air current by which the cotton is carried away from the
beater and placed upon a pair of "Cages." From this point the cotton is
conducted in the form of a sheet between four heavy calender or
compression rollers, the rollers being superimposed over each other, and
the cotton receiving three compressions in its passage.

This makes a much more solid and tractable sheet of cotton, and it is
now simply wound upon an iron roller in the form of a roll of cotton
termed a "lap," being now ready for the subsequent process, as shown in
the illustration (Fig. 14).

Image: FIG. 14.--Scutching machine with "lap" at the back.

=Scutching.=--This term obviously means beating, and the process itself is
simply a repetition of the opening and cleaning properties of the
opener, these objects being attained to a greater degree of perfection.
For the best classes of cotton it is often deemed sufficient to pass it
through the opener alone, and then to immediately transfer the lap to
the process of carding. For some cottons it is the practice to pass the
cotton through two scutchers in addition to the opener, while in other
cases it is the practice to use one scutcher only in addition to the
opener.

In the scutcher it is the most common practice to take four laps from
the opener and to place them in a specially constructed creel and
resting on a travelling "lattice" or apron. By this they are slowly
unwound and the four sheets are laid one upon another and passed in one
combined sheet, through feed rollers, to a two or three bladed beater,
exactly like the second one described when treating upon the double
opener. Also, exactly in the same manner, a lap is formed ready for the
immediately succeeding process of carding. In the scutcher the doubling
of four laps together tends to produce a sheet of cotton more uniform in
thickness and weight than that from the opener. This object of equality
of lap is also invariably aided by what are termed Automatic Feed
Regulators, which regulate the weight of cotton given to the beater to
something like a continuous uniformity. The action is clearly seen in
the illustration.

=Carding.=--By many persons this is deemed to be the most important
operation in cotton spinning. Its several duties may be stated as
follows:--

1. The removal of a large proportion of any impurities, such as
broken leaf, seed and s