Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/550

518 at the time, namely, the affairs of the banking-house of W. Palmer and Company. The whole affair was mixed up with insinuations against Lord Hastings, especially charging him with having been actuated by favouritism towards one of the partners in the firm. From imputations which were inconsistent with his whole character he has subsequently been exonerated. But while smarting under them he tendered his resignation in 1821, though he did not leave India till January 1823. He was much exhausted by the arduous and almost incredible labours which for more than nine years he had sustained. Among his charac teristics it is mentioned that &quot; his ample fortune absolutely sank under the benevolence of his nature;&quot; and, so far from having enriched himself in the appointment of governor- general, he returned to England in circumstances which obliged him still to seek public employment. In 1824 he received the comparatively small post of governor of Malta, in which island he introduced many reforms and endeared himself to the inhabitants. He died in 1826, leaving a request that his right hand should be cut off and preserved till the death of the marchioness of Hastings, and then interred in her coffin.

1em  HAT, a covering for the head worn by both sexes, and distinguished from the cap or bonnet by the possession of a brim. The modern hat can be traced back to the petasus worn by the ancient Romans when on a journey ; and hats with brims were also used, probably on like occasions, by the earlier Greeks. It was not till after the Norman conquest that the use of hats began in England. A &quot;hatte of biever&quot; about the was worn by some one of the &quot;nobels of the lande, mett at Clarendom ; &quot; and Froissart describes hats and plumes which were worn at Edward s court in, when the Garter order was instituted. In the the use of the scarlet hat which distinguishes cardinals was sanctioned by Pope Innocent IV. The merchant in Chaucer s Canterbury Tales had

and from that period onwards there is frequent mention of &quot;felt hattes,&quot; &quot; beever hattes,&quot; and other like names. Throughout mediaeval times the wearing of a hat was regarded as a mark of rank and distinction. The caprices of fashion in hats during the reign of Elizabeth may be understood from an extract from Stubbs s Anatomic of Abuses, published about :—

1em

During the reign of Charles I. the Puritans affected a steeple crown arid broad-brimmed hat, while the Cavaliers adopted a lower crown and a broader brim ornamented with feathers. Still greater breadth of brim and a profusion of feathers were fashionable characteristics of the hats in the tini3 of Charles IL, and the gradual expansion of brim led to the device of looping or tying up that portion. Hence arose various fashionable &quot;cocks&quot; in hats, such as the &quot;Monmouth cock,&quot; &c. ; and ultimately, by the looping up equally of three sides of the low-crowned hat, the cocked hat which prevailed throughout the 18th century was elaborated. Since the beginning of the present century the cocked hat as an ordinary article of dress has disappeared. The Quaker hat, plain, low in crown, and broad in brim, which originated with the sect in the middle of the 17th century, is also now becoming uncommon. See.

.—Until recent times hats were prin cipally made by the process of felting, and as tradition ascribed the discovery of that very ancient operation to St Clement, he was assumed as the patron saint of the craft, and the annual festival of the trade continues to be held on St Clement s day, the 23d November. At the present day the trade is divided into two distinct classes. The first and most ancient is concerned with the manufacture of felt hats, and the second has to do with the recent but now most extensive and important manufacture of silk or dress hats. In addition to these there is the equally important manufacture of straw or plaited hats, which does not fall within the scope of this article; and hats are occasionally manufactured of materials and by processes not included under any of these heads, but such manufactures do not take a large or permanent position in the industry.

Felt Hats.—As now made, felt hats are of three different kinds, plain soft, plain hard, and &quot; napped &quot; or &quot; ruffed &quot; felts. There is a great range in the quality of felt hatp, the finer and more expensive qualities being made entirely of fur ; for commoner qualities a mixture of fur and Saxony wool is used ; and for the lowest kinds wool alone is em ployed. The processes and apparatus necessary for making hats of fur differ also from those required in the case of woollen bodies ; and in large manufactories machinery is now generally employed for operations which at no distant date were entirely manual. In the smaller factories, and for special objects, the old hand processes are still in opera tion. An outline of the operations by which the old beaver hat was and to some extent yet is made will give an idea, of the manual processes in making a fur napped hat, and the apparatus and mechanical processes employed in making ordinary hard and soft felts will afterwards be noticed. Hatters fur consists principally of the hair of rabbit? (technically called coneys) and hares, with some proportion of nutria, musquash, and beavers hair ; and generally any parings and cuttings from furriers are also used. Furs intended for felting are deprived of their long coarse hairs, after which they are treated with a solution of nitrate of mercury, an operation called carroting or secrctage, whereby the felting properties of the fur are greatly increased. The fur is then cut by hand or machine from the skin, and in this state it is delivered to the hat maker. Rabbits fur for hat-making now comes in large quantities from the Australian colonies ; and it is also largely collected in the United Kingdom and in northern Europe. A considerable trade in rabbit fur for hat-making is maintained between Great Britain and the United States.

