It would transcend the limits of our space to attempt to sketch the history and growth of the woollen industry in the manufacture of cloths. It is an industry, if not as old as the hills, at least very nearly as old as the fig-leaves of Eden; for we may assume as a certainty that the next garments worn by our forefathers were constructed in some way from the fleecy coats of these bleating followers. We exported woollen and worsted yarns of a value of over four million pounds sterling in 1894, and of woollen and worsted manufactures, a value of 14 millions sterling. In the middle ages all the best wool was produced in England, and the woollen manufacture centred in Norfolk, although both the west of England and Ireland had also factories. There are in existence specimens of cloth made in these medieval days which show that the quality of the wool employed was not equal to that which we now use. The art of weaving is supposed to have been brought from the Netherlands; at any rate there were strong political alliances between the English sovereigns and the weavers of Bruges and of Ghent. In these old days, when Norwich, Aylsham, and Lynn had the lion's share of the woollen trade, the great mart for English and foreign cloths was at Stourbridge, near Cambridge, where a fair was held which lasted a month every year. There were 2546 woollen and worsted mills in the United Kingdom in 1890. The chief seats of the wool manufacture in England in the 14th century were Bristol, London, and Norwich. Now Wiltshire and Gloucestershire are famous for broadcloths, while the towns of Leeds and Huddersfield in Yorkshire are important centres. Galashiels and Hawick are noted for their tweeds. COTTON. The Father of History, in writing about India--'the last inhabited country towards the East'--where every species of birds and quadrupeds, horses excepted, are 'much larger than in any other part of the world,' and where they have also 'a great abundance of gold,' made the following remarkable statement. 'They possess likewise,' he said, 'a kind of plant, which, instead of fruit, produces wool of a finer and better quality than that of the sheep, and of this the natives make their clothes.' This was the vegetable wool of the ancients, which many learned authorities have identified with the byssus, in bandages of cloth made from which the old Egyptians wrapped their mummies. But did Egypt receive the cotton plant from India--or India from Egypt--and when? However that may be, there is good reason to believe that cotton is the basis of one of the oldest industries in the world, although we are accustomed to think of it as quite modern, and at any rate as practically unknown in Europe before the last century. As a matter of fact, nevertheless, cotton was being cultivated in the south of Europe in the 13th century, although whether the fibre was then used for the making of cloth is not so certain. Its chief use then seems to have been in the manufacture of paper.