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SOME ILLUSTRATIONS OF DOMESTIC SPINNING.

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wound upon the reel which is loosely fitted on the pin or axle of the flier. In this wheel the driving cord passes twice round the wheel and drives the reel at a

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greater speed than the flier, so as to make it draw in the thread after it has been twisted. In the eighteenth century wheels were often fitted with two fliers and reels, so that a clever spinster might produce a thread with each hand. The contrivance which carries the flax

in place of the ancient distaff is called the "Rock".1 The invention of the flier has been attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, who shows it in one of his drawings, but it does not seem to have reached this country until near the close of the seventeenth century.

Amongst the art treasures in the Dresden Gallery is a painting by Casp. Netscher, who died 1684, called "Die Spinnerin", in which a woman sits at a wheel, the same in principle as the modern small spinning-wheel, but having a handle by which it may be worked, as well as a treadle. In the great modern industry of spinning by machinery, the spinning-jenny and the mule machines were adaptations of the simple action of the wool wheel; while the throstle machine was adapted from the more modern wheel with flier and reel. The former was considered to produce a somewhat finer thread, suitable for the weft, the latter being used for the warp, but there have been very great improvements in respect of fineness of thread. I believe, however, that nothing has exceeded the thread produced by hand with only spindle and distaff.

The wheels which I now exhibit are a selection from three sets, including implements for measuring the yarn and making it into hanks, being those used by my grandmother and her daughters over a period extending from the latter part of the last century to the year 1829. This was in a time when spinning was still the favourite occupation of the female members of a family, and it was carried on at last without much reference to the profit to be made out of it. The weaver came round regularly and carried away the yarn, taking his orders as to the kind of linen that was to be woven from it. The oldfashioned household from which these spinning-wheels came was installed in an interesting old manor house in a Holderness village, and it was not the spinsters but

1 This name was used in the sixteenth century, if not earlier, e.g. :"Sad Clotho held the rock, the while the thread

By grisly Lachesis was spun with pain,

That cruel Atropos eftsoon undid,

With cursed knife cutting the twist in twain.”

Spencer, Faery Queene, iv, 2 (1596).-ED.

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the master of the house who first saw that this most ancient of female occupations had at length gone out of date. He stored them away where I found them, after more than fifty years.1

As recently as 1851 I had worsted spun and knitted into stockings by an old woman in a village in Herefordshire, and spinning might have been seen in remote districts in England several years later. But it must now have completely disappeared, owing to the cheapness of linen and cotton cloths. Woollen thread is still spun in the Orkneys upon a small wheel such as these, and similar wheels are used in Norway.

The revolution of taste has of late years been bringing again into notice this lost art of spinning; and I thought that these specimens, which are very perfect and complete, would be of interest to the Association.

1 In old days, schools for girls were principally spinning-schools. The last resident owner of that old house, dying in 1721, founded a charity, including a school, in which ten girls who could read were to be taught by the school-dame to knit, spin, and sew.

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THE FRENCH STONEHENGE."

AN ACCOUNT OF THE PRINCIPAL MEGALITHIC REMAINS IN THE MORBIHAN ARCHIPELAGO.

BY T. CATO WORSFOLD, F.R.HIST.S., F.R.S.L.

(Read March 2nd, 1898.)

HE question which will probably occur to the majority of people on looking at the title, "The French Stonehenge", is, I think, Where is it? And although there are scattered through the kingdom of France many interesting pre-Celtic remains, nevertheless these almost invariably occur in isolated instances, none of which equal in interest the marvellous group of menhirs, dolmens, cromlechs and other remains of a like nature, which present themselves as objects of surpassing interest in the vicinity of Carnac and Locmariaquer in the Morbihan district and archipelago, and claim our attention under the above colloquial title.

The Morbihan district, situated in the extreme west of Brittany, consists principally of numerous small islands, equalling, it is said, the number of days in the year, which justify the name of archipelago. Here, too, we have the Bay of Quiberon, where the great sea-battle between the fleet of the Veneti, the hardy race who inhabited these regions, and Cæsar's triremes took place : noteworthy for the fact that the ships of the former were furnished with leather sails.

According to tradition, this people, driven from their home by the master-hand of Imperial Rome, sailed away to the Mediterranean; where, struck by the similarity of the group of islands they found there to those on which they had dwelt for ages past, they settled again, and

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