When the wool is on the back of the sheep, the scales of the
woolly hair all point in the same direction, so that while maintained in
that attitude the individual hairs slide over one another, and do not
tend to felt or mat; if they did, woe betide the animal. The fact of the
peculiar serrated, scaly structure of hair and wool is easily proved by
working a hair between the fingers. If, for instance, a human hair be
placed between finger and thumb, and gently rubbed by the alternate
motion of finger and thumb together, it will then invariably move in the
direction of the root, quite independently of the will of the person
performing the test. A glance at the form of the typical wool fibres
shown (see Fig. 10), will show the considerable difference between a
wool and a hair fibre. You will observe that the scales of the wool
fibre are rather pointed than rounded at their free edges, and that at
intervals we have a kind of composite and jagged-edged funnels, fitting
into each other, and thus making up the covering of the cylindrical
portion of the fibre.
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