Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/807

Rh S H A S H E 781 Magazine. He engraved the Doctors Disputing on the Immaculateness of the Virgin and the Ecce Homo of Guido Reni, the St Cecilia of Domenichino, the Virgin and Child of Dolci, and the portrait of John Hunter of Sir Joshua Reynolds. His style of engraving is thoroughly masterly and original, excellent in its play of line and rendering of half-tints and of "colour." He died at Chiswick on the 25th July 1824. In his youth Sharp was a violent republican, and, owing to his hotly expressed adherence to the politics of Paine and Home Tooke, he was examined by the privy council on a charge of treason. He was also one of the greatest visionaries in matters pertaining to religion. No imposture was too gross for him to accept, no deception too glaring for his eyes to admire. The dreams of Mesmer and the rhapsodies of Brothers found in Sharp a staunch believer ; and for long he maintained Joanna Southcott at his own expense. As an engraver he achieved a European reputation, and at the time of his death he enjoyed the honour of being a member of the Imperial Academy of Vienna and of the Royal Academy of Munich. SHAWL, a square or oblong article of dress worn in various ways dependent from the shoulders. The term is of Persian origin (shdl), and the article itself is most characteristic and important in the dress of the natives of north-western India and Central Asia; but in various forms, and under different names, essentially the same piece of clothing is found in most parts of the world. The shawls made in Kashmir occupy a pre-eminent place among textile products ; and it is to them and to their imitations from Western looms that specific importance attaches. The Kashmir shawl is characterized by the great elabora- tion and minute detail of its design, in which the "cone" pattern is a prominent feature, and by the glowing harmony, brilliance, depth, and enduring qualities of its colours. The basis of these excellences is found in the raw material of the shawl manufacture, which consists of the very fine, soft, short, flossy under- wool, called pashm or pashmina, found on the shawl-goat, a variety of Capra hircus inhabiting the elevated regions of Tibet. There are several varieties of pashm, according to the districts in which it is produced, but the finest is a strict monopoly of the maharaja of Kashmir, through whose territory it comes. Inferior pashm and Kirman wool a fine soft Persian sheep's wool are used for shawl weaving at Amritsar and other places in the Punjab, where colonies of Kashmiri weavers are established ; but just in proportion to the quality of the pashm used are the beauty and value of the resulting shawl. In Kashmir the shawl wool is sorted with patient care by hand, and spun into a fine thread, a work of so much delicacy, owing to the shortness of the fibre, that a pound of undyed thread may be worth 2, 10s. The various colours, costly and perma- nent, are dyed in the yarn. The subsequent weaving or embroidering is a work of great labour, and a fine shawl will occupy the whole labour of three men not less than a year. Thus a first-rate shawl weighing about 7 1b may cost at the place of its production 300, made up thus: material 30, labour 150, duty 70, miscellaneous expenses, 50. In shawl cloth many varieties of dress articles are made ; but of shawls themselves, apart from shape and pattern, there are only two principal classes : (1) loom- woven shawls called tili walla, tilikar or kani kar, sometimes woven in one piece, but more often in small segments which are sewn together with such precision and neatness that the sewing is quite impercept- ible (such loom-woven shawls have borders of silk, the weight and stiffness of which serve to stretch the shawl and make it set properly) ; and (2) embroidered shawls amlikdr, in which over a ground of plain pashmina is worked by needle a minute and elaborate pattern. A large proportion of the inhabitants of Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir, are engaged in the shawl industry ; and there are numerous colonies of Kashmiri weavers settled at Amritsar, Ludianah, Nurpur, and other towns in the Punjab. Amritsar is now the principal entrepot of the shawl trade between India and Europe. Imitation Kashmir shawls are made at Lyons, Nimes, Norwich, and Paisley, and some of the products of these localities are little inferior in beauty and elaboration to Oriental shawls ; but owing to the fluctuations of fashion there has been little demand for the finer products of European looms for many years. See also PERSIA, vol. xviii. p. 626. SHEA BUTTER. See OILS, vol. xvii. p. 747. SHEARWATER, the name of a bird first published in Willughby's Qrnithologia (p. 252), as made known to him by Sir T. Browne, who sent a picture of it with an account that is given more fully in Ray's translation of that work (p. 334), stating that it is " a Sea-fowl, which fishermen observe to resort to their Vessels in some numbers, swim- ming 1 swiftly to and fro, backward, forward, and about them, and doth as it were radere aquam, shear the water, from whence perhaps it had its name." 2 Ray's mistaking young birds of this kind obtained in the Isle of Man for the young of the Coulterneb, now usually called PUFFIN, has already been mentioned under that heading (vol. xx. p. 102) ; and not only has his name Puffinus anglorum hence become attached to this species, commonly described in English books as the Manx Puffin or Manx Shearwater, but the barbarous and misapplied word Puffinus has come into regular use as the generic term for all birds thereto allied, forming a well-marked group of the Family Procel- lariidx (cf. PETEEL, vol. xviii. p. 711), distinguished chiefly by their elongated bill, and numbering some twenty species, if not more: the discrimination of which, owing partly to the general similarity of some of them, and partly to the change of plumage which others through age are believed to undergo, has taxed in no common degree the ingenuity of those ornithologists who have ventured on the difficult task of determining their characters. Shear- waters are found in nearly all the seas and oceans of the world, 3 generally within no great distance from the land, though rarely resorting thereto, except in the breeding- season. But they also penetrate to waters which may be termed inland, as the Bosphorus, where they have long attracted attention by their daily passage up and down the strait, in numerous flocks, hardly ever alighting on the surface, and from this restless habit they are known to the French-speaking part of the population as dmes damnees, it being held by the Turks that they are animated by condemned human souls. Four species of Puffinus are recorded as visiting the coasts of the United Kingdom; but the Manx Shearwater aforesaid is the only one that at all commonly occurs or breeds in the British Islands. It is a very plain-looking bird, black above and white beneath, and about the size of a Pigeon. Some other species are 1 By mistake, no doubt, for flying or "hovering," the latter the word used by Browne in his Account of Birds found in Norfolk (Mus. Brit. MS. Sloaue, 1830, fol. 5. 22 and 31), written in or about 1662. Edwards (Gleanings, iii. p. 315) speaks of comparing his own drawing "with Brown's old draught of it, still preserved in the British Museum," and thus identifies the latter's "Shearwater" with the " Puffin of the Isle of Man." 2 Lyrie appeal's to be the most common local name for this bird in Orkney and Shetland; but Scraib and Scroter-nre also used in Scotland. These are from the Scandinavian Skraape or Skrofa, and considering Prof. Skeat's remarks (Etym. Dictionary, p. 546) as to the alliance between the words shear and scrape it may be that Browne's hesitation as to the derivation of "Shearwater" had more ground than at first appears. 8 The chief exception would seem to be the Bay of Bengal and thence throughout the western part of the Malay Archipelago, where, though they may occur, they are certainly uncommon.