and pipe-like; apparently
with breaks or joints like those of a cane.

Cotton also varies so much in its own kind, that every description is
different and somewhat puzzling. Semper says that it approaches the
ribbon form, with thickened edges, and is like a half-cylinder twisted
spirally; but when wetted with oil, it swells into a complete
cylinder.[131]

Wool and hair are hollow pipes without joints. Woollen fibres look
like cylindrical snakes with a scaly surface. This roughness gives
wool a clinging power which exceeds that of any other material, except
the hair of some few animals.[132]

Silk threads consist of twin pipes laid parallel, and held together by
the varnish with which they are glazed. Silk is tough and elastic.

The qualities needed for textile materials may be thus enumerated:
Pliability, toughness (i.e. tensile strength), and intrinsic
durability.

Of course, the material must to a certain degree influence the style
of the fabric, and its selection must be according to the effect
intended to be produced.[133] The fashions of the day, and the needs
of the special manufacture, must greatly modify the choice of
materials, which fluctuate, often disappear, and sometimes revive
again.

Certain materials which have been, at one period, much admired, have
been entirely lost; and indeed we may say that the only permanently
employed textiles are wool, flax, cotton, and silk, which apparently
never can be superseded. With them, all domestic requirements can be
satisfied, and all artistic and decorative fabrics produced, varied,
and perfected; and these, from all time recorded in history, have been
enriched and glorified with gold, either inwoven or embroidered.

The game of "animal, vegetable, or mineral" might well be played with
textiles only. Nothing has been alien to the crafts which from time
immemorial have spun, woven, felted, netted, and embroidered.

The materials now in general use, and which, once known, have never
been abandoned, I have already named, and shall discuss their history
separately; they are wool, flax, cotton, and silk. To these I must add
hemp, both wild and cultivated.

Hemp is a kind of nettle. It was grown in Colchis, and in those cool
regions which did not produce flax. Hemp is hardly grown in India,
except to extract from it the narcotic, Cannabis Indica. It was a
northern production used throughout Scandinavia. Herodotus (iv. 14)
says, "Hemp grows in the land of the S