WOMEN'S FORUM.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 276, 21 November 1931, Page 15

WOMEN'S FORUM.

scouts And guides. Mixed unofficial camps attended by Boy Scouts, and Girl Guides are causing alarm to officials of both organisations, "writes our London correspondent. Complaints of lack of, supervieion at these camps have been followed by the submission of the following resolution to a meeting of the Girl Guides' county camp advisers next month. A vote will be taken on the following: "That we should seriously consider whether the time has not come when, in the interests of our Bangers, it would not be better to sanction the running of small mixed camps under proper supervision and with suitable arrangements, rather than be forced either to encourage or else to try to forbid Eangers to camp with Rovers out of uniform as they are now doing in increasing numbers."

ANCIENT ARTS. > "The History of Weaving and the Art of Hand Weaving and Spinning," was the subject of a lecture given at the Sdciety of Arts last evening by Miss Sybil Mulvany. In the absence of Dr. ■<Gunson," Mr. Kohn presided. In explaining the difference between spinning and weaving, the speaker said that in spinning the threads were drawn oufby the fingers and twisted or spun into a continuous thread. Up to the seventeenth tentury that was done by a distaff and spindle, and then the spinning wheel .was invented, and it made the work much quicker. { All the beautiful linen cloth in which the ancient mummies were wrapped, was done by he distaff and spindle, and some countries, especially Czecho-Slovakia and the Balkans, still used this imethod almost entirely. The women of- Norway,. Sweden, Lapland and Denmark ueed the spinning wheel to while away the long winter days. Weaving, on the other hand, said Miss Mulvany, was the making of cloth from thread which had been spun already. In looms all over the world, either in the.most primitive native loom suspended from a tree branch and kept taut by a native sitting in a sling, or in the most complicated power-looms that modern genius had invented, the principles of weaving were exactly the same. A brief outline ot the history of weaving was-then given, the speaker punctuating her address With interesting anecdotes. India, she said, was famous for her cottons, Egypt for linens, and -China for silks. China had kept the secret of her siljc manufacture for thousands of years, anyone disclosing it being subject to capital punishment. Two Buddhist monks ultimately stole the seqret and got back to India with silkworms concealed ,in their turbans. At the beginning of the seventeenth century weaving was 'very wonderful, and it had never approached the same standard since. The decline of the art since the invention of machinery was then touched upon by the speaker, who stated that it began to revive steadily about 40 years ago. It was found that certain colours and textures could not be achieved with machines, and handspinning became popular once again.