In all the districts the main labour of plaitting was undertaken by the womenfolk, although men at times took a hand, and in the middle of the nineteenth century it was a real feature of village life in the plaitting centres, to see the good wives and daughters, after the household work was done, standing at their cottage doors, swiftly and dexterously plaitting and at the same time distributing that gentle and yet satisfying gossip that was so dear to rustic life. In this manner by far the greater bulk of the plaits of Italy and Great Britain were made, although in the latter country since about 1825, some extra means of production were employed. Instead of the art being taught from mother to daughter, as was the earlier practice, schools of plaitting were instituted. These were generally arranged in the cottage home of one of the most expert plaitters, who for a small fee taught the youthful aspirants all the intricacies of the trade, while at the same time the instructor contrived to keep at work on her own particular plaitting. The view of a portion of a plaitting village, on a fine day, with its generally picturesque surroundings framing an active rustic group of women engaged in plaitting, was such as should have commended itself to many an artist, yet strange to say the pictures extant of either Italian or British plaitting scenes are very few and far between. These pleasant, pastoral occupations seem to have gone for ever from Great Britain, although one may still see in Italy the once familiar signs. Hand plaitting has migrated to the Far East, and there in China and Japan one can to-day see, with the changes consequent on the different setting of the scenes, the sights which seventy-five years ago were common to the countryside around Dunstable, Hemel Hempstead, and Luton. [Illustration: Fig. 6 STRAW PLAITTERS AT WORK--A BEDFORDSHIRE VILLAGE SCENE IN 1870] Machine-made straw plaits have never been produced in quantities in England, although patents for plaitting have been taken out; but in Italy and Switzerland machinery has been in use since 1840, producing plaits of straw mixed with other fibres, such as horsehair or silk. Fiesole, a village near Florence, became a centre of machine-made plaits of Tuscan straw woven in Wattle fashion with strands of silk and cotton, and gave its name to all similarly made plaits.