Indian ancient silks and textiles have their own distinctive marks. From Marco Polo, who wandered much over the far east some time during the thirteenth century, we learn that the weaving in India was done by women who wrought in silk and gold, after a noble manner, beasts and birds upon their webs:--“Le loro donne lavorano tutte cose a seta e ad oro e a uccelli e a bestie nobilmente e lavorano di cortine ed altre cose molto ricamente.” [Illustration: Byzantine Dalmatic: preserved at Rome.] Several of the South Kensington mediæval specimens from Tartary and India show well the truthfulness of the great Venetian traveller, while speaking about the textiles which he saw in those countries. The dark purple piece of silk figured in gold with birds and beasts of the thirteenth century, no. 7086, is good; but better still is the shred of blue damask, no. 7087, with its birds, its animals, and flowers wrought in gold and different coloured silks. India, also, has ever been famous for its cloud-like transparent muslins, which since Marco Polo’s days have kept that oriental name, through being better woven at Mosul than elsewhere. The Syrian school is well represented at South Kensington by several fine pieces. The whole sea-board of that part of Asia minor, as well as far inland, was inhabited by a mixture of Jews, Christians, and Saracens; and all were workers in silk. The reputation of the neighbouring Persia had of old stood high for the beauty and durability of her silken textiles, which caused them to be sought for by the European traders. Persia’s outlet to the west for her goods lay through the great commercial ports on the coast of Syria. Persia was accustomed to set her own peculiar seal upon her figured webs, by mingling in her designs the mystic “homa:” and, naturally, this part of the pattern became in the eyes of Europeans, at first, a sort of assurance that those goods had been made in Persian looms. By one of the tricks of imitation followed in that day, as well as now, the Syrian designers threw the “homa” into their patterns. Borrowed perhaps originally from Hebrew tradition, this symbol of “the tree of life” had in it nothing objectionable either to the Christian, the Jew, or the Moslem: all three, therefore, took it and made it a leading portion of design in the patterns of their silks; and hence it is that we meet with it so often. Though at the beginning, it may be, done with a fraudulent intention of palming on the world Syrian for Persian silks, the Syrians usually put also into their fabrics a something which declared the real workmanship. Mixed with the “homa,” the “cheetah,” and other elements of Persian patterns, the discordant two-handled vase or the badly-imitated Arabic sentence betrays the textile to be not Persian but Syrian. No. 8359 exemplifies this. Furthermore, probably in ignorance about Persia’s superstitious use of the “homa” in her old religious services, the Christian weavers