Some few other kinds of hats go out without any trimming or lining, but the processes they undergo will be set out in one or the other of the following descriptions. Every kind of straw needs some variety of treatment before the actual “Finishing,” but generally speaking these treatments are confined to the darker coloured plaits. Thus for chip plaits black receives a coating of some oil such as olive or nut, etc. This levels up the colour of the plait and intensifies the black; all other colours are simply cleared by steam, and receive no further treatment. For plaits of actual straw various things have been used during the course of time. The first method, when only black, navy blue and brown colours were available, was to smartly brush the dry finished hat with stiff hand-brushes. This imparted a fairly good shiny surface to the straw, but it had two drawbacks, one was that the brushing did not in any way improve the colour of the sometimes faultily-dyed plaits, and the other was a tendency during the brushing of roughing up the fibres of the straw. In those early days when lowness of price was not the main consideration, many hats have been glossed by brushing over with white of egg, but the expense of that rendered it useless for the bulk of the goods. The “Japan Black,” that in the time of our fathers was utilized every spring on the household grates, was also tried on black straw hats, but its viscous nature was quite unsuitable for the proper polishing of straw. It was not until about 1870 that a polish made of some resinous gums and methylated spirit was put on the straw hat market. For black this “polish” was tinted with a suitable colouring matter, and at first the finding of the proper ingredient that would remain in solution without precipitation was a long and tedious job; however, this was eventually effected, and now for some years the various best brands of straw hat spirit polish leave nothing to be desired. A German firm, Messrs. Conrad Schmidt & Co., was about the first to market in Great Britain a satisfactory spirit polish, and with recurring improvements this brand of polish, now made by the London Varnish Co., still obtains a large share of straw hat makers’ demands. Brown and blue spirit polishes were produced by dyeing the gum and spirit mixture with an aniline dye. White spirit polish was of two varieties, one nearly opaque white, and the other a clear fluid with just a slight yellow tint. These can be used on all coloured straws other than black, brown and navy, but many manufacturers omit to polish the very light tones such as champagne, silver grey, sky blue, etc. White, of course, is never polished. When spirit polish was first introduced it was very costly, and on the advent of the China plait to these markets, it was found to be rather out of proportion expensive to the very cheap Canton hats. A polish made of ordinary glue mixed with lamp black or charcoal was current in Luton about 1870, and