TEASEL TMBE ll5 



paler in colour. As the hooks disappear when the plant is grown on poor 

 soils, there is much reason to believe that it is but a variety of D. sylvestris. 

 Though occurring occasionally in waste places and on hedge-banks, the Fuller's 

 Teasel cannot be regarded as truly wild; having been long cultivated for 

 the use of the cloth manufacturers, it is often found apparently wild near 

 the Teasel fields. 



In some of our northern counties, as well as in Wiltshire, Essex, Somer- 

 setshire, and Gloucestershire, large quantities of the Fuller's Teasel are 

 planted that their chaffy heads may be used in carding wool. No mechanical 

 contrivance answers this purpose so well as to supersede this primitive 

 method of dressing woollen cloth ; and each piece of cloth is found to con- 

 sume from 1,500 to 2,000 Teasel heads. The heads are fixed round a large 

 Avheel, which is made to revolve in such a way that the awns may, as it is 

 termed, "tease "the nap of the cloth. Dyer, in his poem, "The Fleece," 

 alludes to the treatment which the cloth receives after having been 

 thoroughly wetted : — 



' ' Then up-hung on rugged tenters to the fervid sun, 

 Its level surface reeking, it expands, 

 •And brightening in each rigid discipline. 

 And gathering wortli, as human life, in pains, 

 Conflicts and troubles. Soon the clothier's shears 

 And burler's thistle skims the surface sheen." 



The Teasel is usually grown by small farmers or cottagers, and its produce 

 is very uncertain, being much affected by the season. There is also consider- 

 able trouble in drying the heads so as to preserve the hooks from breaking 

 off. The large heads are technically termed "Kings," and the smaller 

 " Princes " ; the latter are better adapted for the finer cloths, while the larger 

 are used for coarse thick fabrics. In Essex it was some years since customar}'' 

 to sow caraway along with the Teasel. The Teasel-gatherers during Jvtly or 

 August collect the heads into bundles for the market. Manufacturers rather 

 give the preference to the Teasels reared in Gloucestershire, in which county 

 they are said to have been earliest planted. They are believed to have been 

 cultivated first in this country about the latter part of the reign of 

 Edward III. 



The French call this plant C/utrdon a Foulon ; the Germans, Kardendistel ; 

 the Italians, Dissaco ; the Dutch, Vollers Kaarden ; and the Spaniards, Car- 

 deucJia ; most of the European names, like our own, referring to its use. 

 This is very ancient, and either this or some similar plant seems to have been 

 used by the celebrated Koman fullers, whose occupation gave employment to 

 so large a number of people. Beckmann says that the fullers received the 

 cloth as it came from the loom, that it might be "scoured, walked, and 

 smoothed." This " walking " was eftected by stamping it with the feet. The 

 rough wool raised l)y this operation was combed off j^artly by the skin of a 

 hedge-hog, and partly by some plant of the thistle kind, in order to give the 

 cloth a nap. Though the Teasel is not a thistle, yet it was probably con- 

 sidered one in former daj^s, and its old English as well as German name still 

 hints at its connection with the thistle tribe. 



It is remarkable that the pile or nap of the cloth should in India be drawn 

 out by means of a plant, for Sir Joseph Hooker says that in the Himalaya the 



