ped when it
was laid away was known as tissue paper, and Mr. William Maskell
states that the name has clung to it, and that is why thin paper
is called "tissue paper" to-day.

St. Peter's in Rome possessed a great pair of silver curtains,
which hung at the entrance to the church, given by Pope Stephen
IV. in the eighth century.

Vitruvius tells how to preserve the gold in old embroidery, or
in worn-out textiles where the metal has been extensively used.
He says: "When gold is embroidered on a garment which is worn out,
and no longer fit for use, the cloth is burnt over the fire in
earthen pots. The ashes are thrown into water, and quicksilver
added to them. This collects all particles of gold, and unites
with them. The water is then poured off, and the residuum placed
in a cloth, which, when squeezed with the hands suffers the liquid
quicksilver to pass through the pores of the cloth, but retains
the gold in a mass within it."

An early allusion to asbestos woven as a cloth is made by Marco
Polo, showing that fire-proof fabrics were known in his time. In
the province of Chinchintalas, "there is a mountain wherein are
mines of steel... and also, as was reported, salamanders, of the
wool of which cloth was made, which if cast into the fire, cannot
burn. But that cloth is in reality made of stone in this manner,
as one of my companions a Turk, named Curifar, a man endued with
singular industry, informed me, who had charge of the minerals in
that province. A certain mineral is found in that mountain which
yields threads not unlike wool; and these being dried in the
sun, are bruised in a brazen mortar, and afterwards washed, and
whatsoever earthy substance sticks to them is taken away. Lastly,
these threads are spun like ordinary wool, and woven into cloth.
And when they would whiten those cloths, they cast them into the
fire for an hour, and then take them out unhurt whiter than snow.
After the same manner they cleanse them when they have taken any
spots, for no other washing is used to them, besides the fire."

In the Middle Ages it would have been possible, as Lady Alford
suggests, to play the game "Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral" with
textiles only! Between silk, hemp, cotton, gold, silver, wool,
flax, camel's hair, and asbestos, surely the three elements all
played their parts.

Since the first record of Eve having "sewn fig leaves together to
make aprons," women have used the needle in some form. In England,
it