The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous ... - Cd3wd.com

416 MANUFACTURE AND USE OF
the colder regions of Asia, scarlet or purple felt (such as that
lately re-hivented at Leeds, in England), was used by the
Babylonish decorators for the drapery of tlie funeral pile, when
Alexander celebrated the splendid obsequies of Hcpha^stion : for
so we must understand the expression ^oiviKiks TiX/jrar (Diod. Sic.
xvii. 115. p. 251, Wess.). Xenophon {Ci/croj). v. 5. § 7.)
mentions the use of felt manufactured in Media, as a covering
for chairs and couches. The Medes also used bags and sacks
of felt (Atheneeus, 1. xii. p. 540 c. Casaub.).
The process, by which wool is converted into felt, was called
by the Greeks rnXmn (Plato de Leg. 1. viii. p. 115. ed. Bekker),
literally a compression, from m\iw, to compress*. The
ancient Greek scholion on the passage of Plato here referred
to thus explains the term : TiiXnatoii' ri)? ita rns twv ipdov Tru/fi'&Jo-ftoj
yivoixsi/rii taOtiTos, i. 6. " clotli made by the thickening of wool."
With this definition of felt agrees the following description of a
ncTaao; in a Greek epigram, Avhich records the dedication of it to
Mercury :
—
Hoi Tov TriXrjdcvTa Si' ci^avTOV rpi^os d^voC,
'Epfidj KaAXtreXr/f eKpiftaac Triraaov.
Brunck, Anal. ii. 41.
The art of felting was called h nt\r,TiKh (Plato, Polit. ii. 2. p. 296,
ed. Bekker). According to the ancient Greek and Latin glos-
saries, and to Julius Pollux (vii. 30), a felt-maker, or hatter, was
TTiXoTToios or TriXtoTOTToiof, lu Latlu coactUiarius . From Trrxof {dim.
TTiXioi', second dim.
ttiXMio*'), the proper term ior felt in general,
derived from the root of TnXiu, came the verb mXou, signifying to
felt, or to make felt, and from this latter verb was formed the
ancient participle TriXurSf, felted, which again gave origin to
irtXojroTrotoj.
It may be observed, that our English word felt is evidently
a participle or a derivative, and that its verb or root Fel ap-
pears to be the same with the root of ^nXta).
The Latin cogo, which was used, like the Greek ttiXeu, to de-
* Xenophanes thought that tJie moon was a compressed cloud {v^os 7T€7Ti\rj[ievov,
Stobaei Eclog. i. 27. p. 550, ed. Heeren) ; and that the air was emitted from the
earth by its compression (jt'CKricii, i. 23. p. 484).