This is a modern name for the stitch used in the Stuart period embroideries for fur robes and the coats of certain beasts. It is also known as velvet, rug, and raised stitch. To carry it out a series of loops is worked over a small mesh or a knitting pin, each loop being secured to the foundation stuff by a tent or cross-stitch, and when the necessary number of rows is completed, the loops are cut as in the raised Berlin wool-work of early Victorian days. In this stitch the ermine of the king's robe in Plate XVIII. is worked, the black stitches meant to represent the little tails having been put in after the completion of the white silk ground. Embroidery in Purl and Metallic Threads Purl, both that of uncovered metal and that variety wherein the corkscrew-like tube is cased with silk, was generally cut into pieces of the desired length, which were threaded on the needle and sewn down either flat or in loops, according to the design. The greater part of the beautiful piece of embroidery illustrated in Plate XXIII. is carried out in coloured purl, applied in pieces sufficiently long to follow the curves of the pattern. A small example of looped purl-work is shown in the left-hand upper corner of Fig. 66. Purl embroidery, when at all on an elaborate scale, was worked in a frame and "applied," although the slighter portions of a design were often executed on the picture itself. The system of working all the heavier parts of such embroideries separately and adding them piece by piece, as it were, until the whole was complete, accounts, of course, for the extreme rarity of a "drawn" or puckered ground in old needlework pictures and panels. Besides purl, gold and silver "passing" often appears in certain sections of the work. "Passing" is wire sufficiently thin and flexible to be passed through instead of couched down on the foundation material, and with it such devices as rayed suns and moons are often embroidered in long-and-short stitch. A thicker kind of metallic thread was employed for couching, this being made in the same manner as the Japanese thread so largely used in modern work, save that a thin ribbon of real gold took the place of the strip of gilt paper as a casing for the silk thread. Water is sometimes represented by lengths of silver purl stretched tightly across a flat surface of satin or laid-stitches, but not infrequently, instead of the purl, sheets of talc are laid over the silken stitchery. The water in Susannah's bath (Plate XIV.) is covered with talc, hence it appears light coloured in the reproduction. When a metallic lustre was needed, the plumules of peacocks' feathers were occasionally employed, especially in the bodies of butterflies and caterpillars, but these unfortunately have almost invariably suffered from the depredations of a small insect, and it is seldom that more remains of them in old embroideries than a few dilapidated and minute fragments, often barely recognisable for what they are. Lace-Stitches