MUSLIN, a term embracing the thin delicate woven cotton fabrics, the lightest and most airy of all textures. The word is derived from Mosul; the original home of muslin-weaving is the East Indies, where even yet wonderful fabrics for airy lightness and delicacy continue to be woven with the aid of only the most rude and primitive appliances. The most delicate muslins are made at Dacca, where webs have been woven of yarn calculated to be equal to 380° (that is, 380 hanks, each 840 yards in length, weigh 1 Bb). Such a web measuring 10 yards 1 foot in length by 3 feet in breadth, and having 104 threads of warp and 100 of weft per inch, was found to weigh not more than 1565 grains. Figured, embroidered, colour-woven, and printed muslins are made at various places, principally in Madras province, and gold and silver printed muslins are made at Jeypore and Hyderabad in India. The making of muslin in Europe was first attempted at Glasgow by Robert Monteith about the year 1780, but he had to procure Indian bird-nest yarn for his web. The improvements in machinery effected about that time, however, soon enabled spinners to produce yarn of high counts, and thereafter the muslin trade took firm hold in the west of Scotland. In recent times the perfection of combing machinery, <tc., has enabled spinners to supply yarn of much greater tenuity than has ever been spun in India, and indeed vastly finer than is of any use for weaving purposes. A few yards of muslin have been woven with 700° cotton, but it is of use only to indicate the limit up to which it is possible to weave yam. Fine muslin or tarlatan has been woven of 440° yarn by Μ. Thivel Michon of Tarare in France, but to the eye and touch it is less fine and delicate than Dacca “mulmul khas,” owing possibly to dressing ...