Oil or grease, on the contrary, when applied directly upon wool, covers up these lamina or scales, thereby destroying their felting power, as is well known to all wool spinners, however little they may understand the real cause of its being so, further than the fact of giving to it a smooth gliding effect, so necessary for the object of their business. It may be amusing, whether true or not, to know that the rude Turcomans are said to dwell, even to this day, in tents covered with felt, which they make by treading with their feet the raw material of which it is made, whilst it lies upon the ground, thus favoring the supposition that felting was invented prior to weaving. However, so far as we can learn, a real systematic method of felting is comparatively of a late date, and until within a few years felt has been chiefly employed for hats and hats alone. This is, however, now but a branch of the felt manufacture, for plaids, coats, vests, pants, leggings, shoes, gaiters, slippers, mittens, and caps, the covering of steam cylinders and boilers, carpets, polishing cushions for jewellers and marble cutters, covering for the roofs of houses which is afterwards waterproofed, as also linings of water-tight compartments in ships and ship sheathing, and the covering for the blocks of calico and other printing, &c. &c., are now made of this material. As the nature of hair and the principle upon which its felting property depends become better known, the manufacture of felt will be stimulated and increased, and applied to many purposes other than those above enumerated, and not imagined at the present time. The high price of the finer furs, resulting from the indiscriminate destruction of the animals which produce them, forms the only apology for the introduction of an inferior material into the body of the manufactured article. Cotton, which is of quite a limber nature, is too pliable, as indeed are all vegetable products when mixed with fur. They lie dead within the body of the mass, and if the labor be continued beyond a certain time, the active principle of the fur will be seen to have clung to itself, leaving the cotton quite exposed on the outside. Even under the most perfect manipulation, a mixture of cotton, from its want of elasticity, will give a product which is to a corresponding degree deteriorated. There was a time when beaver skins were bought from the natives, by the Hudson Bay Company, at the regular price of 14 skins for a gun, 7 for a pistol, 2 for a shirt or one pair of stockings, 1 for a comb, or twelve needles, &c. &c., less than the hundredth part of their real value, and all the other fur-bearing skins belonging to that country were rated by that of the beaver.