The materials out of which the articles in this collection were woven, are severally wool, hemp, flax, cotton, silk, gold, and silver. The silken textures are in general wholly so; in many instances they are wrought up along with either cotton, or with flax; hence, in ancient documents, the distinction of “holosericum,” all silk, and “subsericum,” not all silk, or the warp--that is, the longitudinal threads--of cotton or flax, and the woof--that is the cross-threads of silk. Very seldom is the gold or the gilt silver woven into these textiles found upon them in a solid wire-drawn form, but almost always, after being flattened very thin, the precious metal was wound about a very small twist of cotton, or of flax, and thus became what we call gold thread. As a substitute for this, the Moors of Granada, and after them the Spaniards of that kingdom, employed strips of gilded parchment, as we shall have to notice. SECTION I.--TEXTILES. Under its widest acceptation, the word “textile” means every kind of stuff, no matter its material, wrought in the loom. Hence, whether the threads be spun from the produce of the animal, vegetable, or the mineral kingdom--whether of sheep’s wool, goats’ hair, camels’ wool, or camels’ hair--whether of flax, hemp, mallow, Spanish broom, the filaments drawn out of the leaves of the yucca--Adam’s needle--and other plants of the lily and asphodel tribes of flowers, the fibrous coating about pods, or cotton; whether of the mineral amianthus, of gold, silver, or of any other metal, it signifies nothing, the webs from such materials are textiles. Unlike to these are other appliances for garment-making in many countries; and of such materials, not the least curious, if not odd to our ideas, is paper, which is so much employed for the purpose by the Japanese. At the outset of our subject a word or two may be of good use, upon _The Geography of the Raw Materials_. one or other of which we shall always find wrought up in the textiles in this collection. We will then begin with WOOL. After gleaning out of the writings of the ancients all they have said about the physical geography of the earth, as far as their knowledge of it went, and casting our eyes upon a map of the world as known of old, we shall see at once the materials which man had at hand, in every clime, for making his articles of dress. In all the colder regions the well-furred skins of several families of beasts could, by the ready help of a thorn for a needle, and the animal’s own sinews for thread, be fashioned, after a manner, into the requisites of dress.