In spinning and weaving the ancients evidently rivalled us, though without the aid of machinery. As far, indeed, as the former process is concerned, no machinery can rival the human hand, which, from its slight oily exudation[1283] is enabled to communicate superior strength and evenness to the finest threads. Thus in Hindustân muslins were formerly produced, which, laid on the grass and wetted by dew, became invisible.[1284] And there is no reason for doubting that the produce of ancient Greek looms rivalled those of Dakka. The fabrics of Cos[1285] and Tarentum appear, in fact, from the testimony of the ancients, to have floated like a snowy mist around the female form, disclosing its whole contour like a gauze veil.[1286] In flowered and variegated tissues,[1287] too, they attained extraordinary excellence. The finest and most brilliant shot stuffs imitating the breast of the dove, flowered cloth of gold, and the weaving of gold wire itself, were known to the ancients. Silk, before that of China[1288] was common in the west, they obtained from the beard of a sea shell; and lawn and cambric and open work, like Brussels or Valenciennes lace, were familiar to them. ----- Footnote 1283: The whole of the manufacture in India is by hand-spinning, consequently there is a greater tension, from the moisture which the hand gives them, than can be had from anything in the shape of machinery; a fine yarn can be produced by hand-spinning “from a short staple, which frame-spinning will not touch at all.” Report from the Lords, July 8, 1830, p. 316. Footnote 1284: Tavernier relates, “that the ambassador of Shah Sefi, on his return from India, presented his master with a cocoa-nut, set with jewels, containing a muslin turban, sixty covits, or thirty English yards, in length, so exquisitely fine, that it could scarcely be felt by the touch.” The Hindoos, vol. i. p. 188. Footnote 1285: Winkel. Hist. de l’Art. i. 498. Footnote 1286: Athen. xii. 23. Aristoph. Lysist. 48. Poll. vii. 76. Footnote 1287: To these an allusion is made in the following passage of Plato: ὥσπερ ἱμάτιον ποικίλον πᾶσιν ἄνθεσι πεποικιλμένον, οὕτω καὶ αὔτη πᾶσιν ἤθεσι πεποικιλμένη καλλίστη ἂν φαίνοιτο. De Repub. viii. t. vi. p. 401. Cf. Poll. iii. 34. Winkelmann, i. 500. Athen. ii. 30. Footnote 1288: Paus. vi. 266, sqq. Aristoph. Hist. Animal. v. 19, p. 138. Plin. Nat. Hist. ix. 26, seq. Gibbon, t. vii. p. 90, seq. Dapper, p. 266. ----- Being ignorant of who was the inventor of the art of weaving, they attributed the honour to Athena, who imparted a knowledge of it to Arachnè,[1289] a virgin of Mæonia, afterwards changed into a spider. But spiders were not long the only weavers among the Hellenes, who speedily invented the upright and horizontal looms, which, in after times at least, were constructed from the wood of the andrachnè.[1290] ----- Footnote 1289: Goguet, i. 266. Plut. Nic. § 9. Footnote 1290: