BLANKET, in Commerce, a warm woolly sort of
VOL. III. Part II.
stuff, light and loose woven, chiefly used in bedding. The manufacture of blankets is chiefly confined to Witney in Oxfordshire, where it is advanced to that height, that no other place comes near it. Some attribute a great part of the excellency of the Witney blankets to the abstersive nitrous water of the river Windrush, wherewith they are scoured; others rather think they owe it to a peculiar way of loose spinning which the people have thereabouts. Be this as it will, the place has engrossed almost the whole trade of the nation for this commodity; insomuch that the wool fit for it centres here from the furthest parts of the kingdom. Blankets are made of felt-wool, i. e. wool from off sheep-skins, which they divide into several sorts. Of the head wool and bay wool they make blankets of twelve, eleven, and ten quarters broad; of the ordinary and middle sort, blankets of eight and seven quarters broad; of the best tail wool, blankets of six quarters broad, commonly called cuts, serving for seamen's hammocks. See HYKES.