as formidable as the halbert and the bill proved to be in battles of later centuries, and they lopped off the arms of the assailants and cut down their horses. The fire of the attack died out and the left wing (Bretons) fled in rout. But as the fyrd levies broke out of the line and pursued the Bretons down the hill in a wild, formless mob, William’s cavalry swung round and destroyed them, and this suggested to the duke to repeat deliberately what the Bretons had done from fear. Another advance, followed by a feigned retreat, drew down a second large body of the English from the crest, and these in turn, once in the open, were ridden over and slaughtered by the men-at-arms. Lastly, these two disasters having weakened the defenders both materially and morally, William subjected the huscarles, who had stood fast when the fyrd broke its ranks, to a constant rain of arrows, varied from time to time by cavalry charges. These magnificent soldiers endured the trial for many hours, from noon till close on nightfall; but at last, when the Norman archers raised their bows so as to pitch the arrows at a steep angle of descent in the midst of the huscarles, the strain became too great. While some rushed forward alone or in twos and threes to die in the midst of the enemy, the remainder stood fast, too closely crowded almost for the wounded to drop. At last Harold received a mortal wound, the English began to waver, and the knights forced their way in. Only a remnant of the defenders made its way back to the forest; and William, after resting for a night on the hardly-won ground, began the work of the Norman Conquest.
HASTINGS, a city and the county-seat of Adams county,
Nebraska, U.S.A., about 95 m. W. by S. of Lincoln. Pop.
(1890) 13,584; (1900) 7188 (1253 foreign-born); (1910) 9338.
Hastings is served by the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, the
Chicago & North-western, the Missouri Pacific and the St Joseph
& Grand Island railways. It is the seat of Hastings College
(Presbyterian, coeducational), opened in 1882, and having 286
students in 1908, and of the state asylum for the chronic insane.
The city carries on a considerable jobbing business for the farming
region of which it is the centre and produce market. There
are a large foundry and several large brickyards here. Hastings
was settled in 1872, was incorporated in 1874 and was chartered
as a city in the same year.
HAT, a covering for the head worn by both sexes, and distinguished
from the cap or bonnet by the possession of a brim.
The word in O.E. is hœt, which is cognate with O. Frisian hatt,
O.N. hotte, &c., meaning head-covering, hood; it is distantly
related to the O.E. hod, hood, which is cognate with the German
for “hat,” Hut. The history of the hat as part of the apparel
of both sexes, with the various changes in shape which it has
undergone, is treated in the article Costume.
Hats were originally made by the process of felting, and as tradition ascribed the discovery of that very ancient operation to St Clement, he was assumed as the patron saint of the craft. At the present day the trade is divided into two distinct classes. The first and most ancient is concerned with the manufacture of felt hats, and the second has to do with the recent but now most extensive and important manufacture of silk or dress hats. In addition to these there is the important manufacture of straw or plaited hats (see Straw and Straw Manufactures); and hats are occasionally manufactured of materials and by processes not included under any of these heads, but such manufactures do not take a large or permanent position in the industry.
Felt Hats.—There is a great range in the quality of felt hats: the finer and more expensive qualities are made entirely of fur; for commoner qualities a mixture of fur and wool is used; and for the cheapest kinds wool alone is employed. The processes and apparatus necessary for making hats of fur differ also from those required in the case of woollen bodies; and in large manufactories machinery is now generally employed for operations which at no distant date were entirely manual. An outline of the operations by which the old beaver hat was made will give an idea of the manual processes in making a fur napped hat, and the apparatus and mechanical processes employed in making ordinary hard and soft felts will afterwards be noticed.
Hatters’ fur consists principally of the hair of rabbits (technically called coneys) and hares, with some proportion of nutria, musquash and beavers’ hair; and generally any parings and cuttings from furriers are also used. Furs intended for felting are deprived of their long coarse hairs, after which they are treated with a solution of nitrate of mercury, an operation called carroting or secretage, whereby the felting properties of the fur are greatly increased. The fur is then cut by hand or machine from the skin, and in this state it is delivered to the hat maker.
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| Fig. 1. |
The old process of making a beaver hat was as follows. The materials of a proper beaver consisted, for the body or foundation, of rabbits’ fur, and for the nap, of beaver fur, although the beaver was often mixed with or supplanted by a more common fur. In preparing the fur plate, the hatter weighed out a sufficient quantity of rabbit fur for a single hat, and spread it out and combined it by the operation of bowing. The bow or stang ABC (fig. 1) was about 7 ft. long, and it stretched a single cord of catgut D, which the workman vibrated by means of a wooden pin E, furnished with a half knob at each end. Holding the bow in his left hand, and the pin in his right, he caused the vibrating string to come in contact with the heap of tangled fur, which did not cover a space greater than that of the hand. At each vibration some of the filaments started up to the height of a few inches, and fell away from the mass, a little to the right of the bow, their excursions being restrained by a concave frame of wicker work called the basket. One half of the material was first operated on, and by bowing and gathering, or a patting use of the basket, the stuff was loosely matted into a triangular figure, about 50 by 36 in., called a bat. In this formation care was taken to work about two-thirds of the fur down towards what was intended for the brim, and this having been effected, greater density was induced by gentle pressure with the basket. It was then covered with a wettish linen cloth, upon which was laid the hardening skin, a piece of dry half-tanned horse hide. On this the workman pressed until the stuff adhered closely to the damp cloth, in which it was then doubled up, freely pressed with the hand, and laid aside. By this process, called basoning, the bat became compactly felted and thinned toward the sides and point. The other half of the fur was next subjected to precisely the same processes, after which a cone-shaped slip of stiff paper was laid on its surface, and the sides of the bat were folded over its edges to its form and size. It was then laid paper-side downward upon the first bat, which was now replaced on the hurdle, and its edges were transversely doubled over the introverted side-lays of the second bat, thus giving equal thickness to the whole body. In this condition it was reintroduced between folds of damp linen cloth, and again hardened, so as to unite the two halves, the knitting together of which was quickly effected. The paper was then withdrawn, and the body in the form of a large cone removed to the plank or battery room.
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| Fig. 2. |
The battery consisted of an open iron boiler or kettle A (fig. 2), filled with scalding hot water, with shelves, B, C, partly of mahogany and partly of lead, sloping down to it. Here the body was first dipped in the water, and then withdrawn to the plank to cool and drain, when it was unfolded, rolled gently with a pin tapering towards the ends, turned, and worked in every direction, to toughen and shrink it, and at the same time prevent adhesion of its sides. Stopping or thickening any thin spots seen on looking through the body, was carefully performed by dabbing on additional stuff in successive supplies from the hot liquor with a brush frequently dipped into the kettle, until the body was shrunk sufficiently (about one-half) and thoroughly equalized. When quite dried, stiffening was effected with a brush dipped into a thin varnish of shellac, and rubbed into the body, the surface intended for the inside having much more laid on it than the outer, while the brim was made to absorb many times the quantity applied to any other part.
On being again dried, the body was ready to be covered with a nap of beaver hair. For this, in inferior qualities, the hair of the otter, nutria or other fine fur was sometimes substituted. The requisite quantity of one or other of these was taken and mixed with a proportion of cotton, and the whole was bowed up into a thin uniform lap. The cotton merely served to give sufficient body to the material to enable the workman to handle the lap. The body of the hat
