l. 44.) The old Indian
embroideries in leather are generally applied one on another. The
North American Indians also embroider on leather.[142]

Feather work will be discussed under the heading of "Opus
Plumarium."[143]

On the surface of textiles many substances have been fastened down, in
order to give brilliancy to the general effect--skins of insects,
beetles' wings, the claws and teeth of various animals.[144]

Asbestos linen is the only mineral substance, besides gold, silver,
and tin,[145] that has been employed in embroidery. It has the
remarkable quality of indestructibility by fire. Asbestos linen can be
cleansed by fire instead of water.[146] It is a soapy crystal, found
in veins of serpentine and cipolino in Cyprus, and other Greek
islands. Pliny says it was woven for the funeral obsequies of
monarchs, as it preserved the ashes apart, being itself unharmed by
the fires of cremation. There are several fragments existing, found in
tombs. One of these is in the British Museum.[147]

Marco Polo speaks of a stone fibre found at Chinchin, which answers in
description to asbestos. It was spun by mixing it with threads of flax
soaked in oil; and when woven, was passed through the fire to remove
the flax and the oil.[148]

A miraculous napkin of asbestos was long kept at Monte Casino.

Coral, pearls, and beads of many forms have been used for the
enrichment of embroideries, and for decorating textiles. The whole
surface of the original fabric has often been entirely covered with
them, or the pattern itself has been worked in nothing else. Pearls
are constantly seen worked on dress, coats-of-arms, and embroidered
portraits. Seed pearls, large coarse pearls, and sometimes fine and
precious ones, were surrounded with gold thread embroidery. Coral was
so much used in Sicilian embroideries, and so little elsewhere, that
one gives the name of "Sicilian" to all such work; but occasionally we
find coral embroideries in Spain and elsewhere (Pl. 32).

[Illustration: Pl. 32.
Portion of Dalmatic embroidered by Blanche, Queen of Charles IV.
of Bohemia (fifteenth century). The figures in pearls, on a
background of beaten gold. Bock's "Liturgische Gewaender."
Vol. i. taf. xi.]

Beads of glass were common in Egypt from the earliest times, strung
together by threads so as to form breastplates rather than necklaces.
Whence beads originally came we cannot tell, but it seems that the
Phoenicians