130 



KELIQUIJi AQUITANIOE. 



ledge of this interesting fact I am indebted to my learned friends Dr. Broca and 

 Dr. Pruner-Bey. 



The earliest use of iron or steel needles in Europe that I have been able to 

 learn any thing of was in connexion with the establishment of a manufactory of 

 these kinds of sewing-needles at Nuremberg in the Fourteenth Century. They 

 were known in Prance in 1540, and a little later in England, where they were 

 introduced by Catherine Howard, wife of Henry the Eighth, but they were not 

 sold till the reign of Mary, in 1555. 



At the present day the use of these necessary implements of steel is almost 

 universally spread abroad by European navigators and travellers supplying such 

 ware to the more or less savage nations with whom they come into contact. 



Needles of bone, or of Walrus ivory, were in common use among the Esqui-' 

 maux of the Arctic regions when visited in the first quarter of this Century by 

 Sir John Ross, who, writing of their garments, observes*, "the whole of these 

 are made by women, the needles used being ivory [probably Walrus ivory], and 



the threads of the sinews of the Seal ; the seams are so 



neat that they can scarcely be distinguished." 



A similar account is given by Captain Parry f, who says 



of the Esquimaux, " In some of the few arts practised by 



the women, there is much dexterity displayed, particu- 

 larly in that important branch of a housewife's business, 



sewing, which, even with their own clumsy needles of 



bone, they perform with extraordinary neatness." The 



plate at the end of 'Parry's Second Voyage' (opposite 



p. 548) contains an illustration (fig. 11) of one of these bone 



needles, with its sinew thread ; and we have reproduced it 



in our fig. 50 (Woodcut). It differs but little from, those 



used by the Aborigines of Perigord, except that it is not 



so straight or so delicate as most of those figured in our B. Plate XVII. 



As to the thread used by the Esquimaux in sewing skins together for garments, 



it appears, according to the reports of Ross and Parry, that it is usually made 



from the tendons of the Reindeer ; and when these are wanting, they employ the 



entrails of a species of Seal. 



some woollen thread, from an ancient Peruvian grave, has lately been presented to the Christy Collection by 

 the llev. Saunderson Tennant. EDITOR.] 



* Voyage of Discovery &c., 1819, vol. i. p. 172. 



t Parry's Second Voyage for the Discovery of a North-west Passage, 4to, 1824, p. 537. 



Fig. 50. 



Esquimaux Needle of Bone. 

 (After Parry.) 



