582 



HASTINGS SANDS 



HAT 



on the 23d April 1795, Hastings was acquitted on 

 all the charges, unanimously on all that affected 

 his personal honour. Out of the original members 

 who had met in Westminster Hall when Hastings 

 first bowed his knee at the bar but twenty-nine 

 were left to vote for the final award ; the remaining 

 peers stood round the throne as spectators. Hast- 

 ings left the court a ruined man, the small fortune 

 that he brought from India having been quite con- 

 sumed in the expenses of the defence. But the 

 Court of Directors came to his aid and made pro- 

 vision for his declining years. Carrying out what 

 is said to have been an aspiration of his youth, 

 Hastings bought the old family seat of Daylesford, 

 in Worcestershire, where he passed the rest of his 

 life in the occupations of a country gentleman, 

 varied by occasional visits to London. He gave 

 evidence before parliamentary committees, and dined 

 at Carlton House ; the prince-regent inade him a 

 privy-councillor ; and he received honours from the 

 city and the Houses of Parliament. He died at 

 Daylesford, 22d August 1818, his wife surviving 

 him. In his long and active career Hastings 

 showed constant energy, courage, judgment, and 

 application. In his private life lie was gentle and 

 unselfish. He left no children. 



See Gleig's Memoirs (3 vols. 1841); Mill's History of 

 India, corrected by Wilson's notes; Stephen's Story of 

 Nuncomar ; Trotter's Biography (1878); the article by 

 the present writer in the Dictionary of National Bio- 

 graphy ; Lyall's Warren Hastings (1889); Strachey's 

 Hastings and the Rohilla War (1892) ; Forrest's Admin- 

 istration of Warren Hastings ( 1892 ) ; Col. Malleson's 

 JJife of Warren Hastings ( 1894 ) ; and Sir C. . Lawson's 

 Private Life of Warren Hastings ( 1896 ) ; Macaulay's 

 eloquent essay is untrustworthy. 



Sands. The lower division of the 

 Wealden beds, part of the Lower Cretaceous series. 

 The beds consist chiefly of sand and sandstone with 

 subordinate layers of clay, and vary in thickness 

 from 500 to 1000 feet ; and the group embraces, in 

 descending order: (3) Tunbridge Wells Sand, (2) 

 Wadhurst Clay, ( 1 ) Ashdown Sand. The strata 

 differ very little from those of the overlying 

 Weald Clay, except in being more arenaceous. 

 The beds have been deposited in shallow fresh 

 water. The sand often exhibits fine specimens of 

 ripple-marks, and the clay which separates the 

 sand-beds sometimes contains cracks that have been 

 produced by the drying of the surface on exposure. 

 The strata are highly fossiliferous. There are 

 numerous saurian reptiles, including the huge 

 iguanodon and the flying pterodactyle. The re- 

 mains of several chelonians also occur. The fish 

 belong chiefly to the ganoid or placoid orders, the 

 most remarkable being the lepidotus, whose conical 

 palate teeth and thick square enamelled scales are 

 very frequent. The shells belong to genera which 

 inhabit fresh water, such as Paludina, Cyclas, and 

 Uriio. 



Hat, the principal head-covering of the human 

 family, distinguished from the cap or bonnet by 

 having a brim around it. The history of the hat is 

 of necessity intimately mixed up with that of head- 

 coverings generally, the distinctions of bonnets, 

 hats, and caps being arbitrary and subject to many 

 variations with changing fashion (see illustrations 

 in article FASHION ). The hat, as a roomy brimmed 

 head-covering, is the direct descendant of the petasus 

 of the ancient Greeks, which was distinguished from 

 the other Greek head-gear, the pileus, by the pos- 

 session of a brim, useful for protecting its wearer 

 from the rays of the sun. Tliese Greek hats were 

 made of felt, the material of which the head-gear of 

 early times appears to have been principally fabri- 

 cated. The use of felted hats became known in 

 England about the period of the Norman conquest. 

 The merchant in Chaucer's Prologue to the Canter- 



bury Tales is described as having 'on his hed a 

 flaundrish bever hat. ' About the period of Queen 

 Elizabeth beaver felts in many shapes became 

 common, and for three centuries thereafter fine 

 beaver hats, mostly dyed black, formed the head- 

 covering of the higher classes in Great Britain. 

 But now, though felt hats are the everyday wear 

 of the community, there is no longer such a thing 

 as a genuine beaver hat. See BEAVER, FELT. 



Hats at the present day are fashioned of an end- 

 less variety of materials, and, especially in the case 

 of those worn by ladies, they are so diversified in 

 form that they defy all definition. But with all 

 their variations three principal classes of hat-manu- 

 facture may be distinguished, comprised under the 

 felt-hat, the silk-hat, and the straw-hat trades. In 

 the felt-hat trade, the materials now principally 

 employed are the fur or hair of rabbits, with smaller 

 proportions of hare, beaver, musk-rat, vicuna, and 

 camel for the finer felts ; and sheep's wool for the 

 commoner felted hats. Felt hats of inferior quality 

 are also made with wool mixed with cotton and 

 other vegetable fibres not in reality felted, but 

 cemented by varnish which is used at once to hold 

 together the fibres and to stiffen the hat body. In 

 the felting of rabbit, hare, and other furs, a ' bat ' 

 is first formed, which consists of an expanded cone 

 of equally distributed fibres in quantity sufficient 

 to form the desired hat. To make this 'bat,' a 

 perforated cone of sheet copper is caused to revolve 

 slowly over a funnel under which there is a power- 

 ful blast drawing air inwards through the holes in 

 the copper cone. Fur is fed towards and drawn 

 over the surface of the cone in an equal manner by 

 the suction, and is so held in position till a suffi- 

 cient quantity to form the hat is uniformly distrib- 

 uted over it. A wet cloth is then wrapped around 

 the mass, over which an outer cone is slipped, and 

 the whole then dipped into an acidulated bath of 

 hot water, and by pressure the first stage of felting 

 making the bat cohere is secured. The su bsequent 

 operations are the same in making both fur and 

 woollen felts. In the felting of wool for hats the 

 bat is formed from carded wool wound diagon- 

 ally round a double cone, which gives two bats. 

 These are subjected to the usual operations of felt- 

 ing till a sufficient consistency of felt is obtained. 

 The hats are thereafter roughly blocked on a mould 

 to something of their ultimate form, then dyed, 

 and when hard felts are to be made they are stiff- 

 ened with a varnish of shellac. They are then 

 shaped on a block, smoothed with sand-paper, 

 bound, lined, and finished. The principal supply 

 of rabbit fur for felting is obtained in France and 

 Belgium from domestic rabbits, hundreds of millions 

 being in these countries annually killed as articles 

 of food and for the fur they yield. 



The manufacture of silk hats as a substitute for 

 piled beavers was first attempted about; 1810, but it 

 was not till 1830 that silk plush hats were success- 

 fully made in France. The silk hat consists of a 

 body and rim, usually made of two or three layers 

 of cotton cloth saturated with varnishes, to give the 

 fabric stiffness and make it waterproof. These are 

 moulded on wooden blocks according to the fashion 

 of the day ; and when the desired shape is produced 

 the whole is carefully varnished over with lac and 

 dammar varnish, and before dry the fine silk plush 

 is applied with great nicety, so as to prevent the 

 seams being perceived. It is then trimmed with 

 silk braid on the edge of the brim, and a silken band 

 round the junction of the body with the brim ; and 

 the lining of leather and thin silk being put in, it 

 is complete. Opera-hats or crush-hats consist of a 

 covering of merino stretched over a spiral steel 

 frame, which by pressure flattens down, so that 

 they can be easily carried. 



The manufacture of straw hats, which forms an 



