2nd March, 1886. 



Mr. W. Swanston, F.R.G.S., in the Chair. 



Mr. Seaton F. Mulligan read a Paper on 



THE ANCIENT CIVILISATION OF PERU, INCLUD- 

 ING ITS TEXTILE INDUSTRIES. 



Mr. Mulligan illustrated his lecture with a very interesting 

 and valuable collection of woven and dyed fabric patterns and 

 personal ornaments. This collection of Peruvian antiquities 

 was brought to Ireland by a friend of the lecturer, whose 

 duties as an engineer in Peru gave him opportunities to gratify 

 his archaeological taste, and in so doing to make excavations in 

 the ancient Huacas of the people who inhabited that country 

 in ante-Columbian times. Having given a sketch of the 

 civilisation of the ancient Peruvians, the lecturer said he 

 had been requested to compare our modern productions with 

 the ancient fabrics of Peru. There are some lessons to be 

 learned from those ancient fabrics, and there are lessons to 

 be learned from our foreign competitors in the same field. 

 The Ulster manufacturers have not yet got the linen trade of 

 the world entirely to themselves, and it would be well to know 

 what their opponents are doing. The ancient cloths seem to 

 have been finished in the most perfect manner. How different 

 from the fustian of the present day. A very few years ago 

 Manchester goods were almost unsaleable in the India and 



