We are not aware that this trick has ever been found out before, and it was only by the use of a highly magnifying glass that we penetrated the secret. Our suspicion was awakened by so often observing that the gold had become quite black. Examples of this gilt vellum may be seen here, at Nos. 7095, p. 140; 8590, p. 224; 8639, p. 244; &c. When the Christian Spanish weavers lived beyond Saracenic control, they filled their designs with beasts, birds, and flowers; but even then the old Spanish fine tone of crimson is rather striking in their webs, as is evidenced in the beautiful piece of diaper, No. 1336, p. 64. Spanish velvets--and they were mostly wrought in Andalusia--are remarkably fine and conspicuous both for their deep soft pile, and their glowing ruby tones; but when woven after the manner of velvet upon velvet, are very precious: a good specimen of rich texture, and mellow colouring is furnished by the chasuble at No. 1375, p. 81. The _Sicilian_ school strongly marked the wide differences between itself and all the others which had lived before; and the history of its loom is as interesting as it is varied. The first to teach the natives of Sicily the use of cotton for their garments, and how to rear the silkworm and spin its silk, were, as it would seem, the Mahomedans, who, in coming over from Africa, brought along with them, besides the art of weaving silken textiles, a knowledge of the fauna of that vast continent--its giraffes, its antelopes, its gazelles, its lions, its elephants. These Mussulmans told them, too, of the parrots of India and the hunting sort of lion,--the cheetahs, that were found in Asia; and when the stuff had to be wrought for European wear, imaged both beast and bird upon the web, at the same time that they wove a word in Arabic, of greeting to be read among the flowers. Like all other Saracens, those in Sicily loved to mingle gold in their tissues; and, to spare the silk, cotton thread was not unfrequently worked up in the warp. When, therefore, we meet with beasts taken from the fauna of Africa, such, especially, as the giraffe, and the several classes of the antelope family--in particular the gazelle--with, somewhere about, an Arabic motto--and part of the pattern wrought in gold, which, at first poor and thin, is now become black, as well as cotton in the warp, we may fairly take the specimen as a piece of Sicily’s work in its first period of weaving, all so Saracenic to the eye. Even when that Moslem nation had been driven out by the Normans, if many of its people did not stay as workmen in silk at Palermo, yet they left their teachings in weaving and design behind them, and their practices were, years afterwards, still followed. Now we reach Sicily’s second epoch.