ON SKIRTING WOOL.

Timaru Herald, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 12912, 1 March 1906, Page 7

ON SKIRTING WOOL.

The editor of the " Pastoralists' Review" says that there are buyers for skirted fleece, for necks, pieces, bellies, broken, locks, etc., but very few for fleeces •off which nothing is taken in the way of skirting, and in which everything is bundled in. Unskirted wools are legitimately for acquirement by sorters and scourers, those people who after purchase do to the fleeces what fee grower should have done, and which he could more easily and cheaply do thanthe buyer, for when a fleece is taken off the sheep and thrown on the skirting tsb.e, what should be taken off, or out, js more easily seen and done than when those fleeces hare been rolled up with all

their imperfections, pressed tight in the bales, and have to be unrolled and properly attended to at a .sorter's or a scourer's establishment. In giving a price for such wools, the sorting or scouring buyer naturally makes an allowance per lb at least equalling the wages he will have to pay his men for doing the work which the grower should have done, and herein comes the first loss to the grower. Aparfc from this, such parcels are eo deceptive that a buyer will always bid on what he considers the safe side—that is to say, a price below what he honestly thinks the wool is worth —in order to provide for what may bs described as contingencies. A buyer, above all things, desires evenness, not only of a parcel, but of the contents of each individual bale, and for such he will bid to the extreme end of his limit, but of uncertain-yielding lots he is very shy, and it is easy to understand the uncertainty of. yield * which attends mixed and unskirted lots. It is unfortunate, in a way, that some clips, unskirted and slovenly prepared, sometimes bring as much as lots which have gone through the hands of careful and experienced classers. When such a thing happens, it must be ascribed to careless or hurried valuing on the part of buyers, for it is not likely they will knowingly give as much for the lower qualities left with the fleece as they would for the best of the fleece trimmed and denuded of all lower and objectionable portions. The man who wants fine flour might just as reasonably be asked to give top price for the ground wheat as it comes off the stones or rollers, with the seconds, pollard, and bran all left in it, and be expected to. sift out the fine flour for himself.