when of a greater height, or when made of stiffer materials, as of felt, or in later days of beaver, and both are, in modern times, easily distinguished from the bonnet, which now seems by common consent to be appropriated to female wear, and to be made of silk, or of some other slight material. I must here make an exception as to the Highlander, the national covering of whose head (bearing more the form of the cap) is known by the appellation of the bonnet, and in salutation he is said to (2) “ vail his bonnet" (avaller le bonnet).

Hats of beaver seem to have been first noticed in the 14th century-in the reign of Edward, the Third. On the testimony of Giraldus Cambrensis, a native of Tenby in Pembrokeshire, who travelled with Baldwin, Archbishop of Canterbury, through the Welsh Territories, in the year 1188, we authentically learn, that the beaver was at that period indigenous in Wales, and, from our then slight commercial connexion with distant countries, it is probable, that the material for the beaver hat of the higher classes was procured alone in those days from thence. That early, and interesting, topographical poet, Michael Drayton, mentions the beaver, as the inhabitant of the river Teivi. sixth song are these, and other, lines:

In his

"More famous long agone then for the salmon's leap
For beuers Tivy was, in her strong banks that bred,
Which else no other brooke of Brittane nourished:
Where nature, in the shape of this now-perisht beast -
His propertie did seeme t'have wondrouslie expresst;
Beeing bodied like a boat with such a mightie taile
As serv'd him for a bridge, a helme, or for a sail."

Pennant, in his "British Zoology," also mentions the beaver as a native of Britain, and he has been followed by Donovan in his "Natural History of British Quadrupeds;" who discusses at great length, and with much success, their former actual existence in Wales, of which fact, on the testimony of Giraldus, and of the ancient Welsh Laws of Howel Dha, there can be no doubt. Giraldus, in his Itinerary, speaks of the beaver, as being then very scarce; and my friend, Sir R. C. Hoare, in his valuable Annotations on that Itinerary, says thus: "That the beaver was an extremely scarce animal in Britain may be collected from the laws of Howel Dha, where it appears, that even in those early days, when the skins of the stag, wolf, fox, and otter were valued at eightpence each, the white weasel at twelvepence, and the martin at twenty-four pence, the beaver skin termed Croen Llastlydan* was estimated at the exorbitant price of one hundred and twentypence." This ammal was not only sought for the sake of the skin, but also for that of a substance, highly valuable in the Materia Medica of that day, of which Donovan thus speaks: "The medical drug, known by the name of Castor, is a sebaceous matter, contained in two large glands, with cellular follicles in the lower part of the abdomen, of which useful article each animal produces two ounces. These glands are usually cut off, and the castor they contain Llastlydan, that is, the broad-tailed animal, Leges Wallica, 261.

+ Hoare's "Giraldus," Vol. 2, p. 56.

dried, in which state it is preserved till required for use." On the testimony of Pliny it appears, that these glands were mistaken by the Ancients for another part of the animal, which he, on being closely hunted, as that author credulously states, was accustomed to bite off, and leave to his pursuers. Valuable, therefore, as was the beaver, in the middle ages, for his skin, and for his supply of this celebrated drug, we cannot wonder, that they were become extinct, at the time Sir John Price wrote his description of the Cambrian Principality, in the reign of Henry, the Eighth. The beaver, inhabiting the northern parts of Europe, Asia, and America, is, by the extension of commerce, now procured in abundance; and especially from America (not then discovered) through the medium of the Hudson's Bay Company. In the Greek Language, the beaver (some, less probably, suppose the badger) was named KaoTop; and it is a singular fact, that, in the slang-language of the present day, a hat is denominated a castor; thus a pugilist is said, by way of defiance, to "throw his castor into the ring." From hence I should infer, that the beaver has been called, in different countries, and times, by the appellation of castor; indeed, Donovan thus quotes from the work of Sir John Price: "In Teivi above all the rivers in Wales were in Geraldus's time a great number of castors, which may be englished beavers, and are called in Welch avanc, which name onelie remaineth in Wales at this daie, but what it is very few can tell." Linnæus, in his " Systema Naturæ," places the beaver in

P

66

ver.

the class "Mammalia," order "Glires," genus Castor," and under that genus gives only two species, viz., the Castor fiber, or common beaver, and the Castor Huidobrius, or the Chilese beaFiber is the Latin Name of the beaver. Chaucer, the Father of English Poets, who lived in the days of Richard, the Second, in his Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, describes the pilgrims accidentally meeting at the Tabard, an inn in Southwark. Amongst these, says he,

"A Marchant was ther with a forked berd
In mottelee, and high on hors he sat,
And on his hed a Flaundrish bever hat."

Gascoigne has also (see Hearbes, p. 154),

"A coptankt hat made on a Flemish block."

By this it should seem, that hats of beaver were made in Flanders, or the Low Countries, (in the fens, and dykes of which the amphibious beaver was probably at that time to be found,) and imported from thence. At this we must not be surprised, when we consider, how England was for a series of years harassed by a succession of wars, not only foreign, but domestic. The wars of the barons were shortly followed by the raging discord of the Houses of York and Lancaster. Nothing is more hostile to the advance of the arts than war; but that war is more especially so, which, raging within the bowels of the country, is ever carried on with the greater violence, ever accompanied with the greater cruelty, but is yet, with a solecism of language, rarely paralleled, oddly ycleped--civil

war. In those times, the inhabitants of the Continent surpassed those of this country in various arts, and England imported so many articles necessary to society, that Richard, the Third, supposing, that the strife between the Houses of York and Lancaster was at an end-that he should enjoy his throne in peace, and that "he should live long, and see good days," did, by a statute passed in the first year of his brief reign, 1483, enact, that no merchant stranger should bring into the realm numerous articles therein named. This law was evidently for the purpose of arousing the dormant genius of the country, and, to its own advantage, making it to depend more on its own resources.

Inadequate, then, as must have been the supply of beaver from Wales, and interrupted, as must have been the importation of hats from the impediment of war, we cannot be surprised, that the higher classes sought some other material for the covering of the head, by which to distinguish their station in society, and thus they resorted to the use-of cloth. "Soon after the middle of the fifteenth century (says Strutt) they covered their heads with high bonnets of cloth, a quarter of an ell or more in length," and in such a bonnet, or rather hat, does John Halle, who walked on this world's stage at that very period, now, gentle reader, appear again, and stand before you. His hat appears to be of white cloth, high in the crown, turned up with a narrow rim, and surmounted in front with a single feather, secured with a gold brooch. On reference to the coeval portrait of the "Galante"