Since that period he has unremittingly persevered in the improvement so immediately effected, and has proved during the several years which have elapsed, that an entire satisfactory result in the union of the most essential qualities of down, abundance, length, fineness, lustre, and softness, was accomplished by the first cross, without any return having ensued to the individual characters of either of the primitive races, and in consequence, he has since constantly propagated the produce of that cross among themselves, careful only of preserving animals entirely white and of employing for propagation those bucks which had the down in the greatest quantity and of the finest quality with the smallest proportion of hair.

In 1826, the "Societie Royale et Centrale d' Agriculture de Paris" acquainted with the interesting result of M. Polonceau's flock, being at that time in the third generation, and considering that the down of this new race was more valuable than that of the East, and that it was the most beautiful of filaceous materials known, as it combines the softness of Cashmere with the lustre of silk, awarded him their large gold medal at their session, 4th April 1826, and nominated him a member of their society in the following year.

In 1827, at the exhibition of the produce of National Industry, the jury appointed to judge the merits of the objects exposed, also awarded him their medal.

At present the animals are in the twelfth generation, their health and vigour, the constancy of their qualities, and abundance of their down without any degeneration, prove that this new race may be regarded as one entirely fixed and established, requiring solely the care that is generally observed with valuable breeds; that is to say, a judicious choice of those employed for their reproduction, and in such a climate as New South Wales it may be reasonably expected that the brilliant qualities of their down may yet be improved as has been so eminently the case with the wool of the merino and Saxon sheep imported there.

M. Polonceau has goats that have yielded as many as thirty ounces of the down, in one season, and he states that the whole of his herd produce from twelve to twenty ounces; thus showing the astonishing advantages this new breed has over the uncrossed Cashmere, which never yield more than four ounces and seldom exceed two ounces each.

This gentleman also states, that, the Cashmere Angora goats, are more robust and more easily nourished than the common goat, and that they are less capricious and more easily managed in a

flock; and from the experience he has already had, he finds them much more docile than even sheep. They prefer the leaves of trees, as do all other goats, but they thrive either on hay or straw, or green fodder, or in meadows; they also feed with equal facility on heaths, and on the most abrupt declivities, where the sheep would perish; they do not fear the cold, and are allowed to remain all the winter in open sheds. For the first year or two of M. P's. experiments he thought it prudent to give them aromatic herbs, from time to time, but during the last six years he has not found it necessary. He knows not of any particular disease to which they are subject, his flock never having had any. M. P. arranges they should kid in March, but occasionally he takes two falls from those of sufficient strength during the year.

The down commences to grow in September, and developes itself progressively until the end of March; when it ceases to grow and detaches itself, unless artificially removed.

To collect the down, he waits the period when it begins to detach itself, and then the locks of down which separate from the skin with little force are taken off by hand; the down is taken from the animals every three or four days; in general it first begins to fall from the neck and shoulders, and in the following four or five days from the rest of the body; the collection is completed in the space of eight or ten days. Sometimes the entire down can be taken from the animal at one shearing, and almost in an unbroken fleece, when it begins to loosen. The shearing has the advantage of preserving more perfectly the parallelisms of the individual filaments, which much increase the facility of combing and preparing the down for manufacture.

The mills for spinning Cashmere wool have multiplied very much of late years in France, and the prices of the yarn have fallen from 25 to 30 per cent. notwithstanding their improved fineness and quality. There is a fabric made with a mixture of Cashmere down and spun silk, which is becoming very general: one of the manufacturers, M. Hindenlang, exhibited samples of Cashmere cloth woven with yarn as fine as No. 130 for warp, and No. 228 for weft.

Messrs. Polino, Brothers, of Paris, produced an assortment of Cashmere pieces from 22 to 100 francs per yard, dyed of every fancy shade their establishment, at Ferti Bernard, employs 700 operatives with an hydraulic wheel of 60 horse power.

The Oriental Cashmere shawls are woven by processes extremely slow, and consequently costly, whence their prices are very high ;

1

still sold in Paris at from 3500 to 2500 francs each, and even 50,000 francs have been paid for one shawl. It became necessary, therefore, either to rest satisfied with work which should have merely a surface appearance, or contrive economical methods of weaving, to produce the real Cashmere style with much less labour. By the aid of the draw loom, and still better, the Jacquard loom, M. Ternaux first succeeded in weaving Cashmere shawls perfectly similar to the Oriental in external aspect, which became fashionable under the name of French Cashmere. But to produce shawls altogether identical on both sides, with the Eastern, was a more difficult task, which was accomplished only at a later period by M. Bauson of Paris.

In both modes of manufacture, the piece is mounted by reading in the warp for the different leaves of the headles, as is commonly practised for warps in the Jacquard loom. The weaving of imitation shawls is executed as usual by as many shuttles as there are colours in the design or pattern, and which are thrown across the warp, in the order established by the reader. The greater number of these weft yarns being introduced only at intervals into the web when the composition of the pattern requires it, they remain floating loose at the back of the piece and are cut afterwards without affecting in the least the quality of the texture, but there is a considerable waste of stuff in the weaving, which is worked up into carpets.

The weaving of the imitation of real Cashmere shawls is different from the above. The yarns intended to be for the weft are not only equal in number to the colours of the pattern to be imitated, but besides this, as many little shuttles, (like those used by embroiderers and lace manufacturers. See Figs. 135 and 136,) are filled with these yarns as there are to be colours repeated in the breadth of the piece, which renders their number considerable when the pattern is somewhat complicated and loaded with colours; each of these small bobbins or shuttles passes through only that portion of the flower or pattern in which the colour of its yarn is to appear, and stops at the one side and the other of the cloth, alternately, exactly at its limit; it then returns upon itself after having crossed the thread of the adjoining shuttle: from this reciprocal intertexture of all the yarns of the shuttles, it results, that although the weft is composed of a great many different threads they no less constitute a continuous line in the whole breadth of the web upon which the lay or batten acts in the ordinary way.

We see, therefore, that the whole art of manufacturing this

Cashmere cloth consists, in avoiding the confusion of the shuttles, and in not striking up the lay till all have fulfilled their function. The labour does not exceed the strength of a woman, even though she has to direct the loom and work the treadles: seated on her bench at the end opposite to the middle of the beam, she has for aids, in weaving shawls from 45 to 52 inches wide, two girl apprentices, whom she directs and instructs in their tasks. About four hundred day's work are required for a Cashmere shawl of that breadth.

In the Oriental process all the figures in relief are made simply with a slender pirn, without the shuttle used in European weaving. By the Indians, the flower and its ground are made with the pirn by means of an intertwisting which renders them, in some measure, independent of the warp.

Considered in reference to their materials, the French shawls present three distinct classes, which characterize the three fabrics of Paris, Lyons, and Nimes. Paris manufactures the French Cashmere, so called, of which both the warp and the weft are the yarn of pure Cashmere down; this web represents with fidelity, the figures and the shades of colour of the Cashmere shawl which it copies: the deception would be complete if the reverse of the piece did not show the cut ends, as in common shawl weaving. The warp of the imitation Hindoo shawl, also, woven at Paris, is composed of spun silk, which reduces its price without much impairing its beauty.

Lyons, however, has made the greatest progress in the manufacture of shawls; it excels particularly in the texture of its Thibet shawls, the weft of which is a mixture of wool and spun silk.

Nimes is remarkable for the low price of its shawls, in which, spun silk, Thibet down, and cotton are all worked up together. It appears that M. L. Girad, at Livres, near Paris, has succeeded best in imitating Cashmere shawls, exhibiting all the variety of design and colouring, which appears in the Oriental.

The shawl merchants of India admire the ingenuity of the French artists in imitating Cashmere shawls, but condemn the cloth on account of its harshness, which may consist in a difference in the twisting of the yarn. In the shawl country, there are three coloured wools, white, light brown, and dark brown, the two last are from Thibet, the other from Bholkera; the light brown will receive four colours, viz., black, blue, green and brown; the dark brown will receive only black, brown and blue. The shawl merchants state, that the colours in the English shawls are fugitive.

The colours now used do not exceed fifty in the most elaborate productions of the Cashmere loom. Formerly it was said that three hundred shades of colour were used.

The embroidery is not worked with the needle but woven in the cloth. The patterns are read off from a book, and not from a drawing. There is an embroidery language, by which the colours, number, division, and distribution and manipulations of the threads, and the forms and sizes of the flowers, foliage, &c., are symbolically designated. The looseness of twist in the web is owing to being done by the hand; these objections, however, have all lately been remedied by the ingenuity of the French artists, and particularly Messrs. Polino Brothers, of Paris.

SECTION EIGHTH.

LACE MANUFACTURE.

The history of the arts furnishes no instance of such remarkable changes in the wages of labour, and no such instructive lessons of the influence of mechanical improvements, as that afforded by the manufacture of bobbin-net lace. For some time after its commencement, in Nottingham, in the year 1809, it was common for an artizan to abandon his usual occupation and betake himself to a lace frame, in which he became a share holder, and realize by working upon it, from 20s. to 40s. per day. In consequence of such enormous earnings, Nottingham, with Loughborough, and the neighbouring villages, very soon became the theatre of an epidemic mania, unequalled in modern times. Many unfortunate individuals, although destitute of mechanical genius or even talent of any kind, tormented themselves both day and night with schemes of bobbins, pushers, lockers, point-bars, and needles of every variety of shape imaginable, till their minds got permanently bewildered. Indeed, several lost entirely what little sense they once possessed; and

* For an account of the lace and net-work manufactures in ancient days, the reader is referred to the introduction.