BKUSHES. 341 



Brushes may be defined to be instruments formed of fibres 

 set more or less parallel to each other. The vast variety of 

 brushes used in different parts of Europe is indicative of the 

 civilisation of the nations who use them. Take, for example, 

 the brushes used in household management, such as the hearth- 

 brush, the housemaid's brush, the Turk's-head brush, the 

 crumb-brush, the stair-brush, the carpet-brush, the dusting 

 brush, and many others. 



Then we have those which are applied to our garments, such 

 as the ordinary clothes-brush, the velvet-backed hat-brush, and 

 the three kinds of boot-brushes. 



In architecture, again, we should be very badly off without 

 the painting-brushes, the whitewasher's brush, and the paper- 

 hanger's brush ; not to mention the exceeding variety of 

 brushes used by artists both in oil and water colours. 



As to brushes applied to our persons, we have an infinite 

 number of them. There is, of course, the hair-brush, without 

 a pair of which, one for each hand, no one with a respectable 

 head of hair could be expected to be happy. 



"We may add to this the revolving brush worked by 

 machinery, which is to be found in the rooms of any respect- 

 able hairdresser, and which is a sort of an apotheosis of the 

 Hair-brush, especially when it is worked, as in some places, by 

 the electrical engine. 



Then there is the shaving-brush, once an absolutely necessary 

 article in a gentleman's dressing-case, and above all requisite if 

 the owner should happen to be a clergyman. Nowadays, 

 shaving is rapidly decreasing, and of all the professions, those 

 who are most largely bearded, both in number of beard- wearers 

 and dimensions of the beard, are to be found among the clergy. 



Then there are any number of tooth-brushes for the interior 

 of the mouth, and of flesh-brushes, with or without handles, for 

 the service of the bath. There are even gardeners' brushes, for 

 the purpose of clearing the plants of the aphides, or green- 

 blight, as these insects are popularly called by gardeners. So 

 it will be seen that — absurd as the proposition may appear at 

 first sight — we may really accept the use of the brush as a safe 

 test of the progress of civilisation. 



We will now glance at the illustrations of this subject. 



