a spool, from QUILL. In the South they call it winding of quills, because anciently, I suppose, they wound the yarn upon quills for the weavers, though now they use reeds, or else reeds were called quills, as, inLatin, CALAMI ; for quills, or shafts of birds feathers, are now called CALAMI, because they are employed for the same use of writing, which of old, reeds only were, and to this day are, in some parts of the world. The word PEN, now used for the instrument we write with, is no other than the Latin PENNA, which signifies the quill, or hard feather of any bird, and is a very proper word for it, because our pens are now made of such quills, which, as I said, were formerly made of reeds.