house, he was told to make straight for her mother, where she sat on the hearth, reclining against a pillar, in the beam of the fire, turning the sea-purple threads of wool, with her maidens behind her. It was no mean house : the walls were of brass, the door of gold, between pillars of silver. Naturally the men sat eating and drinking, but the lady of the house sat as I have said; her maidens -those whose duty it was-whirling, as they sat, the spindles, like as the leaves of a tall poplar.

So it has been, without the least alteration, from the earliest recorded period down to the present time. The oldest Egyptian sculptures show the spindle and distaff. Amongst the objects dug up in recent excavations in the Delta have been many complete spindles, with the slender stick and the whorl, and a contrivance for catching the thread after being wound round the spindle. In southern Italy I have obtained from the women spindles such as I exhibit, which are exactly like the oldest on record. It is said that this ancient instrument is still used in remote parts of Ireland, and I have heard of the use of a potatoe to do duty as a spindle whorl. The finest of all spinning is still done by hand in Dacca, in India, where, though the spindle is of the lightest, it is too heavy for the fragile thread, and is made to revolve in a cup or a shell.

At the Christian school at Bethlehem the young girls spin a soft woollen thread, which is woven into a coarse fabric, specimens of which are brought to England to show the work done in the school. I exhibit one of these spindles, together with a piece of cane bent into a loop to form the distaff.

Robert Bloomfield, the author of the "Farmer's Boy", tells how his mother, who died in 1804, spun enthusiastically as long as her strength lasted; and his lines to a spindle intimate that she used that implement with the distaff and not the spinning-wheel, which, however, must have been well known in her time.

Instead of a distaff held in the hand, use was made of a tall stem standing on the floor, which did duty as a distaff, so that the left hand was free to assist in forming the thread. In an engraving published in Paris about

1692 by H. Bonnart, one of the fashionable ladies of the period is represented as Clotho, one of the Fates, using a spindle with a distaff, standing as above described, also a cup used for moistening the fingers.

The seal of the Kingston-upon-Hull Incorporation for the Poor, which bears the date of 1698, shows a spinningwheel of the kind which has perhaps not quite gone out

of use in Wales, and is called the great wool wheel. It is a very simple contrivance for turning a spindle by means of a cord, which is made to pass round a large wheel. The spinster using this wheel stood at her work holding in her left hand a rove of prepared wool, and letting a very small portion slip gradually through her fingers so as to form an even thread. The thread was twisted by the rapid revolution of the "whirral", or

spindle, fixed to the front of an upright board by fine twigs of willow, or by some such durable material. She turned the wheel with her right hand, and retreated for some considerable distance, while the wheel continued to revolve; and when so much of the thread had been formed

as could be done by the impetus given to the wheel, she returned towards the whirral, which then wound up the thread. In order that the thread should be twisted by the whirral it was necessary to hold the wool a little further from the wheel in retreating than in returning, so that the angle formed by the thread with the whirral

should be somewhat obtuse. An old village farmer in Pembrokeshire once showed me where his mother used to set her wheel in the cottage doorway, on moonlight nights when the children were in bed, where they lay listening to the wheel and to her footsteps retreating and returning across the narrow village street. When the Association visited Tenby in 1884, the members might have seen in the Museum there a good specimen of the great wool wheel. The spindle, or whirral, which I exhibit was obtained from an old cottager in Pembrokeshire, who had used it for forty years. This kind of wheel was in use in Europe as early as the fourteenth century, and had probably been introduced from India.

In a village near Aix les Bains, rabbits' wool is spun into yarn for making warm gloves and under-garments, by means of a wheel of improved construction, the spindle being of steel, but on the same principle as this old wool wheel.

It has been said that spinning with the great wool wheel rivalled harp-playing in setting off a graceful figure, and was considered almost as becoming an employment. A woman stood at her wheel, one arm extended, the other holding the thread, her head thrown back to take in all the scope of her occupation.

In the exhibition illustrative of the Royal House of Stuart, held in London a few years ago, there was a miniature jewelled spinning-wheel which came from Linlithgow Palace, and is said to have belonged to Mary of Lorraine. It was made to stand upon a table, the small wheel being turned by a handle with the right hand, while with the left the spinster drew the flax or wool from an upright distaff fixed in the base of the machine. The thread was formed by a revolving flier, exactly like that in the most modern spinning-wheel. This is quite different in principle from the spindle of the great wool wheel, the flier being a piece of wood cut into the form of two horns, each of which is set with a row of iron teeth. The thread is twisted by the rapid rotation of the flier, being drawn in at the end of the iron axle, and, after passing over one of the teeth, being