Probably the first machine-made braid (soon adopted and classified as “straw”) was that known as “crinoline.” This has as its basis horsehair, and is made both of hair alone and of hair mixed with many other fibres. The plain braid can be composed of odd numbers of strands of horsehair from five upwards, in series of numbers divisible by four, plus one; thus 17 ends, 21 ends, 25 ends, and so on; the finest used in the trade is 17 ends, which is about 1/8 of an inch in width, but 21 and 25 ends are the most in request for making the _Crinoline_ hat so well known in the most fashionable quarters. Bonnets were extensively made about fifty or sixty years ago of “Crinoline Fancy” plaits that were a mixture of the hair with silk, or straw, or Tuscan, or any similar fibres. They were also adorned with glass beads or bugles, and with silken knots and small tassels. This trade is now nearly extinct owing to the scarcity of hair, but its place is fully filled with imitations made of various kinds of artificial silk, cellulose, viscose, and the like. A cheaper competitor to crinoline was brought out about 1870, when imitations in cotton fibre braids were put on the market, but these missed entirely the delicate open work of the real article. Similar effects were subsequently made in hemp. But about 1890 the Germans began to make cotton braids in an open, or as it was termed _ajour_, manner, imitating very closely the true effect of crinoline. This had a tremendous success, for the cost was very small. This was followed by the silk imitations mentioned above, and they have now reached such a stage of perfection of make and colour as to entirely outvie their progenitor. About 1892 the Swiss people put on the market the first “Tégal” braids, to be quickly followed by an Italian copy. This rapidly spread to Japan, and the product of that far eastern country soon took the premier place, which at the time of writing it still holds. Another product, largely used in the trade, although strictly speaking neither a plait nor a woven hat, is “Sparterie.” This is wattle woven of fine willow-chip splints into various sized sheets for the different requirements of the trade; it is mainly used as a foundation for making hats to be covered with some delicate plait that will not stand any method of wet stiffening. It is extremely light in weight, and can be moulded to almost any shape, it will stand stiffening, and may be made as firm as stiff buckram. This emanated first from Italy, but now for some years the Japanese have been competing for the trade. CHAPTER VI DYEING The dyeing and bleaching of the various plaits are the next important processes towards making a straw hat.