Full black and griesly did his Face appear, Besmear'd with Smoke that nigh his Eye-sight blent, With rugged Beard and Hoary shaggy Heare, The which he never wont to comb, or comely shear.' 35.

The strain produced by torsion or twisting is essentially shear transverse and parallel to the fibres, combined with longitudinal tension and transverse compression.

And when shearing time approaches he opens hut to all, And though ten thousand are his flocks, he featly shears them all, Even to the scabby wanderer you’d think no good at all; For while he fattens all the great, he boils down all the small— Like a fine old Murray squatter, one of the olden time.

This is due to the difficulty of making the end fastenings secure enough for the full tensile strength to be brought into play before the fastenings shear off longitudinally.