98 ROBINSON. 
f 
hats for export than any others in the Philippines^ these statements are 
considered to be substantially correct. At present^ the people of these 
two places nse bamboo almost exclusively^ but this material is said not 
to ha\"e been employed for more than about forty years. The most 
costly and beautiful hats of Baliuag are still made from hejuco: the use 
of hnntal (the fibro-vascular bundles of the petioles of the buri palm), 
there is so recent, that it has been employed for little more than two 
■ 
and a half years, but this has resulted in the producti(m of a new kind 
of liat, of very superior quality. 
At Calasiao, through statements made to the older people by others 
long since dead, there is evidence of a well-established industry a century 
ago, and documentary statements to the same effect are cited below. 
The belief there is that the date should be set back to about the two 
century mark. 
Mavitac also ascribes this period to the use of the leaves of the species 
of pandan called sdbotan for hats, but the better grades have been made 
for -sixteen years only. At many other towns along the northern and 
eastern sides of Lake Bay, the industry is getting a foothold, with sabotan 
as almost the only material. At Tanay and Pililla, in Eizal, its use for 
mats is claimed to go back from one to two centuries ; at the former place, 
hat-making is only now getting under way, but Pililla, in a time said 
at the most to be eight years, has acquired more than a local reputation. 
In Laguna, from Mavitac, the work is extending through Siniloan, 
Pangil, Paquil, and Paete, with a very little done at Santa Maria. To 
Ma\itac undoubtedly belongs the credit for the introduction of this 
excellent material; people from Pililla learned the work there;- Santa 
Maria does nothing except for local use or as presents, although a consider- 
able fraction of its women understand the work : it is not the custom of 
the town. The work in the other towns of this district is due to the 
efPorts of the Bureau of Education. 
Some of these places are using buri-leaf and hunlal as well, but the 
distinctive material is sabotan. However, it is curious that the original 
locality for the hat generally called Baliuag bu7Hal is Mavitac, it having 
an entirely independent origin in the two places. In another sense, this 
is not at all strange, as the method of weaving in these towns is very 
similar, and has merely been applied to a material previously considered 
typical of a third locality, which has a distinctive method. Even yet, 
very few hats of this kind have been made in northern Laguna, as the 
makers find the work difficult. There is no commercial inaccuracy in 
retaining the tenn Baliuag buntal 
, Sabotan is a species of pandan, and about half way down the eastern 
side of Lake Bay, it is replaced by a different species of that genus, 
excellent for coarse hats, but impossible for anything of higher grades. 
Commercially, the use of this second pandan may be said to be confined 
