plants, I may briefly notice, that the shepherd's rod, or small teasel (dipsacus* pilosus) grows on the lane-side, below the vicarage, at Painswick. Botanists recognize three species of this interesting genus; the one just cited, which affects damp hedges; the wild teasel, (dipsacus sylvestris,) common to uncultivated places, and moist banks, though never seen north of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire; and the fuller's, on which the vast

woollen clothing fabric materially depends; but whether this plant has been ever found really wild

From daw, to be thirsty; in allusion to the leaves forming cavities capable of containing water.

in Britain, appears doubtful. Dr. Smith suspects that there is really no specific difference between this and the preceding.

The fuller's teasel is cultivated in some of the strong clay lands of Wiltshire, Essex, Gloucestershire, and Somersetshire, and affords, with the Dutch rush, or shave-grass,* the only known instances of natural productions being applied to mechanical purposes. Ingenious men have unavailingly endeavoured to supply by art this admirable contrivance of nature, but every invention has been abandoned, as either defective or injurious. The teasel is employed to raise the knap from woollen cloths, and for this purpose the heads are fixed round the circumference of a large broad wheel, which is made to turn in contact with the cloth; if a knot, roughness, or projection, catch the hooks, they break immediately, without injury or contention; but any mechanical invention, instead of yielding, tears them out, and materially injures the surface.

As teasel crops require both labour and attention, are necessarily precarious in their returns, and liable to injury from dripping seasons, those, who have heavy rents to pay, rarely cultivate them. They consequently become the care of the

*The stems have long been imported from Holland, to polish cabinet work, ivory, plaster casts, and even brass.

more considerable cottagers; and as the members of the family unite in raising them, they are frequently a source of considerable profit. To this purpose a small field, or garden, is generally appropriated. When the heads are ripe, they are cut from the plant with a teasel-knife, and affixed to poles. The terminating ones, which ripen first, are called kings; they are large and coarse, about half the value of the best, and fitted only for the strongest kinds of cloth. The collateral heads then succeed, known by the name of middlings, and are used for the finest purposes. As they cannot be thatched like corn, for fear of injuring the fine points, and a free circulation of air is requisite to dry them, every bed-room, passage, donkey-shed, and thatched wall is crowded with these valuable productions. If the sun breaks out, and the wind is drying, women and children are seen running with all haste to place them in the warm beams.

When dry, they are picked and sorted into bundles ten thousand of the best and smallest make a middling pack-nine thousand of the larger the pack of kings. This valuable plant seems to be known in many countries by a name expressive of its use. Gerard eulogizes its virtues; he tells us that its old English name was the carding teasel; that the French call it cardon de foullon; the

Danes and Swedes, karde tidsel; the Flemings, karden distel; the Hollanders, kaarden; Italians and Portuguese, cardo; the Spaniards, cardencha.

Large quantities are frequently brought into the village, and as frequently renewed, for it requires fifteen hundred or two thousand teasels to dress a moderately sized piece of cloth. None of our cottagers raise them; the land is not sufficiently strong and clayey, and their little gardens are more profitably applied to the cultivation of fruit or vegetables. Besides, our village stands at the commencement of a long chain of valleys, which constitute the clothing part of Gloucestershire, and its population is consequently employed in various branches of this valuable manufactory. Yet that manufactory could not be carried on without the assistance of the teasel; and, therefore, in relating its mode of growth, and admirable adaptation of parts to a most useful purpose, the natural historian may be allowed briefly to trace the facts and circumstances connected with the introduction of the clothing manufactory into Britain.

Our ancestors derived, most probably, from Gaul, the valuable arts of dressing wool and flax, of spinning them into yarn, and weaving cloth. Tradition says that they were brought into the island by some of the Belgic colonies, about a

century before the first invasion of the Romans. Certain it is, that an imperial manufactory of linen and woollen cloth, for the use of the Roman army, was established at Vinta Belgarum, now Winchester.

The Anglo-Saxons, also, at the time of their establishment in Britain, well knew the art of dressing and spinning flax, which they manufactured into cloth, and dyed of various colours; and from the high price of wool, enacted by the Saxon legislature, it may reasonably be conjectured, that the making of woollen garments was also practised in the kingdom.

We know not to what extent this art was carried, but that of weaving had attained considerable perfection. A portion of the shroud of Edward the Confessor, now in the museum of Walter Honeywood Yate, Esq. is of a slight, fine, thin texture, woven somewhat like what is now called kersey-fashion. "The dyer's craft," as evinced in ancient manuscripts, was also practised with great success during the Saxon era.

arts.

The Norman conquest improved these valuable Flemish weavers accompanied the army of the Conqueror, and pursued their original occupations with great advantage to themselves, and to the kingdom. Even then the Flemings were so famous for their skill in manufacturing wool,