WOOD-PLAITING. 613 



becoming impaired in colour or texture. After being peeled, 

 the willows should be dried thoroughly by exposure to the sun 

 siiid air, or the}' will turn bluish and become brittle. They 

 must be steeped in water when used, in order to recover their 

 flexibility. For rough hampers and fish-traps the coarser 

 osiers up to J inch thick are used, unpeeled, but freshly cut. 



Coarser baskets are made from unsplit osiers, the thin ends 

 being cut-off, so that the thickness of the pieces used may be 

 fairly uniform. Finer basket-work is made of split osiers. 

 These fine baskets are made over caoutchouc moulds. 

 Spanish cane from the Philippine Islands, and split bamboo, 

 make the finest basket-work. 



In vine districts a large quantity of osiers are used as withes 

 for fastening the vines to tlieir supports. S. riininalis and 

 S'. nlba are used chiefly. 



Wood-plaiting is the most highly artificial employment of 

 wooden threads, which are woven on a frame into various 

 articles. The simplest of these are sieves, mats and carpets 

 made of wooden threads at Klein-Cerma, in Bohemia. Silver- 

 fir fibres are employed chiefly in strands 16 to 24 inches long, 

 spun into threads and woven into carpets. 



The finer kinds of goods are formed of woven material, 

 which is afterwards bent over moulds into hats, purses, cigar- 

 cases, table-covers, blinds, etc. Alt- and Neu-Ehrenberg in 

 Northern Bohemia are the chief seats of this industry, and 

 only aspen wood is used, the wood being imported chiefly from 

 Poland, and kept in pits under water till required. 



The wood-fibres are prepared by the use of planes with 

 numerous longitudinal groovings, and from them the material 

 is woven on looms in pieces 2^ to 3 feet long and 2 feet broad. 

 The threads are sometimes coloured. 



Another way of making textile fibres from wood is to boil 

 pieces of sprucewood, 8 or 9 inches long, with gypsum, as in 

 cellulose-factories, so that the wood becomes resolved into its 

 ultimate fibres. These fibres may then, like cotton or hemp, 

 be spun into threads and twisted into ropes. In California 

 this material is used on a large scale for various purposes. 



