The other example from Pompeii is from a comic fresco in which two men, dressed as women, are having an altercation, and here the artist has not only shown the lines which indicate the ridges of a woven vegetable fibre hat, but this painting provides the first known drawing of a _Bonnet_. Note the tilt at which it is worn, and the portion cut out at base to admit the neck, and also the absolute resemblance to what is known as a “Granny” Bonnet. [Illustration: Fig. 4 HAT WORN BY PENELOPE] [Illustration: Fig. 5 BONNET] A very famous writer of antiquity (perhaps the one best known, except Caesar, to all scholars of Latin), Virgil, makes allusion in his _Pastorals_ to the “plaitting of osiers and willows.” Probably there is no race of men that has so closely maintained to the present time its ancient forms of clothing, as have the Arabs; and they occasionally wear a hat made of twisted bands of straw similar to a beehive. They are the only Moslems that do, and there is no trace of any other people of that religion wearing a similar head covering. All this evidence from the Graeco-Roman and other ancient sources proves that the making in some way of straw hats was fairly general even in the earliest times in the countries of Asia Minor and south-eastern Europe, but some writers on the subject favour the claims of the Black Forest of Germany as having been the birthplace of the industry. This, of course, may be so, although no Germanic or Teutonic writers of equal antiquity have handed down such direct evidence as that of the Graeco-Romans. But it seems a little invidious for any special part of the world to make such a claim, for doubtless the weaving of vegetable fibres was not confined to any particular area, but that primeval man all over the world practised the operation for his own needs. There are no British records of straw hats until A.D. 1459, when it is narrated that Sir John Fastolfe died possessed of “ij Strawen hattes”; the “_Promtorium parvulorum_” of about that date renders the “hatte of straw” as _capedulum_. Spenser, Shakespeare and Thynne, brilliant luminaries of the Elizabethan period, all make allusions to the straw hat. Spenser, the Poet Laureate of Good Queen Bess (who herself is said to have worn a straw hat that may still be seen at Hatfield House), quite early in the sixteenth century says-- “Some plaid with straws,” etc.: while Thynne, about 1570, in his “Debate between Pride and Lowliness” writes of a man with “A _strawen hatte_ upon his head “The which was fastened underneath.” Shakespeare in _The Tempest_ (Act IV, Scene 1) makes _Iris_ say-- “You sunburned sicklemen, of August weary “Come hither from the furrow, and be merry; “Make holyday: your _rye straw hats_ put on “And these fresh nymphs encounter every one “In country footing.” In _A Lover’s Complaint_, the immortal bard still further emphasizes the use, which apparently was fairly general, of the straw hat--