nd the sheet of cotton
thus unwound is passed down a highly polished convex guide-plate to a
pair of small fluted steel rollers.

Both the wooden and the steel rollers have an intermittent motion, as
indeed have also all the chief parts of the machine concerned in the
actual combing of the cotton. The rollers, during each intermittent
movement, may project forward about 3/8 of an inch length of thin cotton
lap.

By this forward movement the cotton fibres are passed between a pair
of nippers which has been for the instant opened on purpose to allow of
this action. Immediately the cotton has passed between the nippers, the
feed rollers stop for an instant and the jaws of the nippers shut and
hold the longer of the cotton fibres in a very firm manner.

Image: FIG. 31.--Combing machine.

The shorter fibres, however, are not held so firmly, and are now combed
away from the main body of the fibres by fine needles being passed
through them. The needles are fixed in a revolving cylinder and are
graduated in fineness and in closeness of setting, so that while the
first rows of needles may be about 20 to the inch, the last rows may
contain as many as 80 to the inch, there being from 15 to 17 rows of
needles in an ordinary comber.

The short fibres being combed out by the needles are stripped therefrom,
and passed by suitable mechanism to the back of the machine to be
afterwards used in the production of lower counts of yarn.

The needles of the revolving cylinder having passed through the fibres,
the nippers open again and at the same time another row of comb teeth or
needles, termed the top comb, descends into the fibres. The fibres now
being liberated, certain detaching and attaching mechanism; as it is
termed, is brought into action, and the long fibres are taken forward,
being pulled through the top comb during this operation. Thus the front
ends of the fibres are first combed and immediately afterwards the back
ends of the same fibres are combed. During the actual operation of
combing each small portion of cotton, the latter is quite separated from
the portion previously combed, and it is part of the work of the
detaching and attaching mechanism to lay the newly combed portion upon
that previously combed. From a mechanical point of view, the detaching
and attaching mechanism is more difficult to understand than any other
portion of the comber, and it is no part of the purpose of this "story
of the Cotton plant" to ent