The only purely animal product used in making plaits is horsehair. This material, so extremely liked by the highest classes of wearers, is now most difficult to obtain owing to the rise of the motor car and the subsequent decline of the horse, but in spite of its origin it has been, since at least sixty years, included as one of the materials that can be classified as a “straw hat.” All the plaits mentioned, with very few exceptions, such as the cellulose, visca, cotton or black horsehair varieties, require bleaching or dyeing before being ready for sewing. In a few cases these processes take place where the plait is made, but generally speaking they are done at the places where plaits are made into hats. CHAPTER IV STRAW HOODS--METHOD OF PREPARING AND OF WEAVING THE FIBRES The previous chapter has dealt with the materials used in plait and the incidental processes necessary to the preparation of the fibres, because plait is undoubtedly at the present day the principal medium for the fashionable straw hat. As the opening chapter proves, the earliest periods of the use of vegetable fibres for head coverings were entirely devoted to the weaving of the hat in one piece, as, for example, a basket is woven. In fact, the use of plait braid has been adopted only for about 400 years, but, although large quantities of woven hats still continue to be made, plait has gradually taken the premier place. But any description of the straw hat trade would be incomplete without a proper account of the woven hat or “hood,” as it is termed in the trade, the word “hat” implying the finished article. In the first place the fibres that can be made into plait can also be made into hoods, for any fibre capable of being manipulated in plaitting can be woven. (The term “woven” is used in want of a better, because the action needed is really more what is generally known as “weaving” than “plaitting,” although both processes are done by hand, with one or two minor exceptions.) There are, however, several fibres that are woven into hoods that are not generally utilized for making plaits, although quite suitable, but their nature is such as to demand a different preparatory treatment to any of those essentially straw. These are the “Panama” and the Panama imitations or substitutes. Among the substitutes are “Curaçoas,” “Bowens,” “Jipi-Japas,” etc.; and the imitations are “Javas,” “Bankoks,” “Brazilians,” “Manilas” and “Paper Panamas” made from strips of paper rolled to imitate, and they do imitate very closely, the natural fibre used in the real Panama. A description of the true “Panama” fibre will give an insight into the nature of all the substitutes, the preparations for weaving being nearly identical in every case. The origin of the Panama hat is obscured in oblivion, but the source of supply ranges round about Central America, and from Ecuador claims are made that in the province of Manavi, a native named Francisco Delgado first made a Panama hat