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GENERAL REPORT OF THE JUDGES OF GROUP IX. 79 fabrication were exhibited by T. M. Dale, of Newark, New Jersey. Still another important application of this material is in the fabrication of black dress goods, resembling alpacas, the mohair being woven with cotton warps. They are called mohair lustres, or brilliantines. Beautiful exhibits of this admirable fabric were made by the Arlington Mills and the Farr Alpaca Company. Mohair is also used in France in the manufacture of laces, which are substituted for the silk laces of Valenciennes and Chantilly. These, however, do not come within the consideration of this group. The soft fibre of the vicuna of South America, composing fabrics which are peculiarly agreeable in feel, was exhibited in very pleasing shawls made by English and California manufacturers. But the most interesting of the new fabrics were the cloths made of camel’s down, which have recently come into extensive use in Russia. The Roumianstoff Cloth Manufactory of General Siloverstoff, situ ated in the Volga Province of Russia, exhibited beautiful plaids, blankets, and other tissues, adapted for the most luxurious consump tion, manufactured from picked camel’s hair and goat’s down. These products find a ready sale in Paris. More interesting still was a stout and leather-like, though soft, cloth, without nap, made from a mixture of Merino, Russian, and Kirghese wool, with camel’s down, called “ half-merino.” This is dyed a pale yellow tint, and finds an exten sive sale among the Asiatic tribes under the name of jeltiak. These tribes, from time immemorial, have dressed in yellow cloth made exclusively of undyed camel’s hair. The appearance of a dyed cloth in which the camel’s hair was mixed with wool, acquiring greater strength, yet having the same color, has caused the Asiatics to sub stitute the jeltiak for the original camel’s-hair fabric. This cloth has now great repute among the Caucasian Armenians, and the Persians living on the coasts of the Caspian Sea. The success of this manu facture is in a measure due to the invention of a particular apparatus by means of which the soft and downy parts are separated from the fleeces of coarse Siberian and Kirghese sheep and goats, the down of the Siberian goat producing stuffs remarkable for their softness and lightness. The celebrated Montagnac coatings, first made in France about twenty years ago by processes patented by the inventor whose name they bear, had beautiful illustrations at the Exhibition, from Sedan. They are sometimes called cloth-velvets. The pile of the surface is usually furnished by fibres of cashmere wool, incorporated in the yarns of the fabric, and they are straight and perpendicular to the surface, the cloth having the aspect of a silk-velvet, but with a softness