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x, etc.; or for cleaning and smoothing the hair of animals; -- usually consisting of bent wire teeth set closely in rows in a thick piece of leather fastened to a back.

, wool, or other fiber, by subjecting it to the action of cylinders, or drum covered with wire-toothed cards, revoling nearly in contact with each other, at different rates of speed, or in opposite directions, The staple issues in soft sheets, or in slender rolls called sivers.

The slag of a furnace, or scoriaceous lava from a volcano. Cinder frame, a framework of wire in front of the tubes of a locomotive, to arrest the escape of cinders. -- Cinder notch (Metal.), the opening in a blast furnace, through which melted cinder flows out.

An instrument shaped like a lute, but strung with wire and played with a quill or plectrum. [Written also cithern.] Shak.

en the lines which divide the different patches of fields are composed of a kind of metal wire secured to the ground; as distinguished from champlevé enamel, in which the ground is engraved or scooped out to receive the enamel. S. Wells Williams.

A fabric made of fibrous material (or sometimes of wire, as in wire cloth); commonly, a woven fabric of cotton, woolen, or linen, adapted to be made into garments; specifically, woolen fabrics, as distinguished from all others.

A rope or wire on which clothes are hung to dry.

eau. & Fl. Cobweb micrometer, a micrometer in which threads of cobwed are substituted for wires.

ld together, a condition easily destroyed by tapping. A common form of coherer as used in wireless telegraphy consists of a tube containing filings (usually a pinch of nickel and silver filings in equal parts) between terminal wires or plugs (called conductor plugs).

h passes through the optical center of the object glass and the intersection of the cross wires at its focus.

The notched scale of a wire micrometer.

A gripping device, as for stretching wire, etc., consisting of two jaws so attached to a ring that they are closed by pulling on the ring.

electric traction, esp. for light railways, in which the actuating current passes along a wire or rail laid in an underground conduit, from which the current is "picked up" by a plow or other device fixed to the car or electric locomotive. Hence Conduit railway.

To transfer (as sheets of partly dried pulp) from the wire clotch mold to a felt blanket, for further drying.

A wire cap for the smokestack of a locomotive.

er grass. (b) A grass of the genus Eleusine (E. Indica); -- called also dog's-tail grass, wire grass, etc. -- Crab louse (Zoöl.), a species of louse (Phthirius pubis), sometimes infesting the human body. -- Crab plover (Zoöl.), an Asiatic plover (Dromas ardeola). -- Crab's eyes, or Crab's stones, masses of calcareou…

hing, as across the letter t. -- Cross wind, a side wind; an unfavorable wind. -- Cross wires, fine wires made to traverse the field of view in a telescope, and moved by a screw with a graduated head, used for delicate astronomical observations; spider lines. Fixed cross wires are also used in microscopes, etc.…

A musical instrument used by gypsies and others, made of steel wire, in a triangular form, on which are movable rings.

ument for determining the frequency of electic wave oscillations, esp. in connection with wireless telegraphy.

erbial for excellence. -- Damascus iron, or Damascus twist, metal formed of thin bars or wires of iron and steel elaborately twisted and welded together; used for making gun barrels, etc., of high quality, in which the surface, when polished and acted upon by acid, has a damasc appearance. -- Damascus steel. See Dama…