From the east to the uttermost western borders of the Mediterranean the weavers of every country had been in the habit of figuring upon their silks those beasts and birds they saw around them: the Tartar, the Indian, and the Persian gave us the parrot and the cheetah; the Africans, the giraffe and the gazelle; the people of each continent, the lions, the elephants, the eagles, and the other birds common to both. From the sculpture of the Greeks and Romans the Sicilians could have easily copied the fabled griffin and the centaur; but it was left for their own wild imaginings to figure such an odd compound in one being as the animal--half elephant, half griffin--which we see in no. 1288. Their daring flights of fancy in coupling the difficult with the beautiful are curious; in one piece large eagles are perched in pairs with a radiating sun between them, and beneath are dogs, in pairs, running with heads turned back; in another, running harts have caught one of their hind legs in a cord tied to their collar, and an eagle swoops down upon them; and the same animal, in another place on the same piece, has switched its tail into the last link of a chain fastened to its neck; on a third sample are harts, the letter M floriated, winged lions, crosses floriated, crosses sprouting out on two sides with _fleurs-de-lis_, and four-legged monsters, some like winged lions, some biting their tails. Hardly elsewhere to be found are certain elements peculiar to the patterns upon silks from mediæval Sicily; such, for instance, as harts, and demi-dogs with very large wings, both animals having remarkably long manes streaming far behind them; or harts lodged under green trees in a park with paling about it. The hawk, the eagle, double and single headed, or the parrot, may be found on stuffs all over the east; not so, however, the swan, which was a favourite with Sicilians and may be seen often drawn with much gracefulness. The Sicilians showed their strong affection for certain plants and flowers. On a great many of the silks in the South Kensington collection from Palermitan looms we see figured upon a tawny coloured grounding beautifully drawn foliage in green; sometimes vine leaves, sometimes what looks like parsley, so curled, crispy, and serrated are its leaves. Another peculiarity is the introduction of the letter U, repeated so as to mark the feathering upon the tails of birds; or to fall into the shape of an O; as in nos. 8591, 8599.