122 CASTOROLOGIA. 



This interesting stor}- accounts for the first principles of felting, 

 and moreover, St. Clement has become the patron saint of the 

 "Hatters' Guild." In Ireland and Roman Catholic countries the 

 festival of St. Clement is celebrated each year on the twenty-third 

 day of November. 



No further knowledge of felting was obtained till the microscope 

 was introduced into manufactures, and the structure of fibres and 

 tissues, both animal and vegetable became clearly understood. 

 Place a single particle of beaver fur under the microscope, and with 

 a power giving magnification of about fifty diameters, the struct- 

 ure at once is discernible. Over the entire 

 surface a series of scales appear to overlap 

 each other, and the edges of these lying all 

 one way, give the fibre the impulse to travel 

 in the opposite direction, for the "staple" — 

 as the edges are called — catches when pressed 

 against, and forces the fibre onward, the dis- 

 engaged edges lying flat the while ; yet so 

 firmly do they interlock, that the fibre will 

 BEAVER FUR ^^ iuvarlably broken in the attempt to with- 



MAGNIFIED 50 DIAMETERS. -' ^ 



draw it. A quantity of fur or wool having 

 this "staple" is pressed and worked together, especially with the 

 assistance of steam or hot water, and the result is a piece of felted 

 cloth, ready to be stretched into the shape of a hat or a boot , and 

 dyed black, or colored to fancy. What is generally called fur is the 

 woolly undercoat, the warm, soft covering supposed to be universally 

 present on animals, and this wool is more or less stapled. The 

 beautiful fur of the beaver is most perfectly constructed for felting 

 purposes, and very early was this property discovered, in fact, so 

 universally was beaver-wool esteemed, that two hundred and fifty 

 years ago, when the introduction of rabbit's fur and other adulter- 

 ations affected the beaver trade, Parliament stepped in to prevent 

 the abuse, and tried to maintain the purity of the beaver felt. 



The interesting document, from which the introductory sentence 

 is selected, gives some idea of the former importance of the beaver 



